IV 


p. 


ENGLISH  AND  AMERICAN 
PHILOSOPHY  SINCE  1800 


By 
ARTHUR  K.  ROGERS 


Student's  History  of  Philosophy 
The  Religious  Conception   of  the  World 
Brief  Introduction  to  Modern  Philosophy 
Essays   in   Critical   Realism    (in   collabora- 
tion   with    six    others) 


ENGLISH    AND   AMERICAN 
PHILOSOPHY   SINCE    1800 

A  CRITICAL  SURVEY 


BY 

ARTHUR  KENYON  ROGERS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1922 

All  rights  reserved 


PRINTED  IN   THE  UNITED  STATES   OF  AMERICA 


Copyright,  1922, 
By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  ttp  and  printed.     Published  May,  1922. 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 

New  York,  U.  S.  A. 


PREFACE 

In  making  an  attempt  to  estimate  the  philosophical  ideas 
of  the  last  century  and  a  quarter,  I  have  endeavored  as  a  his- 
torian to  be  accurate,  and  as  impartial  as  nature  will  permit 
a  philosopher  to  be  when  dealing  with  opinions  more  or  less 
out  of  harmony  with  his  own.  But  it  may  prevent  misleading 
anticipations  if  I  confess  at  the  start  that  the  tracing  of  his- 
torical affiliations  and  historical  causes  has  had  only  a  second- 
ary interest  for  me,  and  that  the  book  as  a  whole  is  frankly 
propaganda,  and  designed  to  recommend  one  particular  atti- 
tude as  against  competing  attitudes;  apart  from  this  critical 
interest,  it  is  not  very  likely  that  the  work  would  have  been  car- 
ried through.  If  it  were  urged  that  fewer  pages  of  criticism,  and 
more  attention  to  historical  and  descriptive  data,  would  have 
resulted  in  a  more  generally  useful  volume,  I  do  not  know 
that  I  should  be  prepared  to  combat  the  claim;  though  I  think 
it  might  be  argued  that  one  way,  and  at  times  the  only  way, 
to  give  an  intelligible  account  of  a  philosophical  doctrine,  es- 
pecially of  the  more  esoteric  sort,  is  by  pointing  out  its  limita- 
tions and  obscurities.  My  real  excuse  however  for  writing  a 
book  in  which  criticism  plays  so  large  a  part  is  that  I  wanted 
to  do  so. 

The  particular  philosophical  standpoint  which  the  following 
pages  presuppose  as  a  background,  is  one  which,  I  am  regret- 
fully aware,  many  philosophers,  perhaps  most  of  them,  will 
regard  as  lamentably  crude  and  unadventurous.  Typically 
two  conceptions  have  been  predominant  in  the  history  of 
thought — the  psychological,  and  the  logical.  For  the  one, 
reality  is  to  be  interpreted  as  experience,  beyond  which  the 
philosopher  should  not  attempt  to  pry,  "experience"  stand- 


484347 


vi  Preface 

ing  for  the  actual  stuff  of  human  living,  to  the  exclusion  of 
any  more  ultimate  or  "metaphysical"  source  in  the  nature  of 
things.  For  the  other,  the  traditional  demands  of  the  dia- 
lectician are  supreme,  with  the  result  that  reality  itself  tends 
to  turn  into  a  system  of  logical  relations  such  as  will  satisfy 
these  demands.  As  against  both  these  ideals  of  method,  I 
have  assumed  constantly  that  the  business  of  philosophy  is 
to  clarify  and  to  bring  into  harmony,  but  also  in  the  end  to 
justify  substantially,  the  fundamental  beliefs  that  are  implicated 
in  our  normal  human  interests;  and  that  this  reference  to  the 
needs  of  living,  in  a  wide  and  generous  interpretation,  furnishes 
the  touchstone  by  which  alone  the  sanity  of  philosophical  rea- 
sonings and  conclusions  can  be  tested.  And  put  to  such  a 
test,  both  empiricism  and  rationalism,  in  their  more  technical 
sense,  seem  to  me  to  stand  condemned.  While  philosophy 
aims  of  course  at  logical  consistency,  thought,  or  logic,  is  an 
instrument,  and  not  the  constitutive  stuff  out  of  which  the 
world  is  made;  and  even  as  an  instrument  its  conclusions,  in 
the  hands  of  human  thinkers,  are  tog  fsdlible  and  precarious 
to  be  safely  substituted  for  the  convictions  by  which  human 
life  and  human  values  are  sustained.  Empiricism,  on  the  other 
hand,  in  spite  of  its  laudable  insistence  on  translating  meta- 
physical reality  into  homely  concrete  matter  of  fact,  is  clearly 
guilty  of  a  paradox  when  it  denies  the  right  of  anything  to  set 
up  as  a  fact  unless  it  be  a  part  of  some  human  experience- 
process.  In  assuming  that  belief,  rather  than  experience,  is  the 
starting-point  of  our  cognitive  contact  with  the  world, — or,  if 
one  prefers,  that  "experience"  includes  a  reference  to  the  nat- 
ural setting  within  which  life  goes  on,  as  well  as  to  the  im- 
mediate facts  of  experiencing, — I  conceive  that  I  am  really 
moFe  empirical  than  the  empiricists.  Of  course  I  know  that 
the  assumption  will  not  approve  itself  to  all  philosophers.  But 
if,  as  seems  unavoMable,  any  fundamental  criticism  in  phi- 
losophy must  start  with  the  acceptance  of  an  attitude,  or  a 


Preface  vii 

notion  of  what  is  reasonable  and  convincing,  which  is  itself 
debatable,  I  do  consider  it  an  advantage  when  this  attitude 
comes  naturally  to  the  human  mind,  and  does  not  have  to  be 
induced  by  a  special  training  in  some  school  of  metaphysics. 

I  ought  perhaps  also  to  say  that  philosophy  here,  in  line 
with  the  purpose  I  have  just  set  forth,  is  taken  in  a  some- 
what restricted  sense,  to  the  exclusion  of  certain  matters  which 
a  history  of  philosophy  might  be  expected  to  cover.  For  the 
most  part  I  propose  to  deal  only  with  those  central  and  illumi- 
nating points  of  view  which  constitute  a  man's  "philosophy"  in 
the  distinctive  sense;  and  the  special  philosophical  disciplines, 
accordingly,  receive  attention  only  as  they  have  some  pretty 
direct  bearing  upon  this.  There  are,  for  example,  technical 
developments  in  the  realm  of  logic  and  scientific  method,  that 
many  would  rate  as  of  large  importance  for  the  history  of 
thought,  of  which  no  account  in  detail  will  be  found  in  these 
pages.  Even  in  the  field  of  ethics,  and  of  metaphysics  itself, 
such  technical  problems  as  are  separable  from  a  comprehensive 
philosophic  outlook  are  relatively  neglected. 

After  some  hesitation,  it  has  seemed  to  me  best  also  to  make 
no  attempt  to  cover  recent  developments  in  philosophy  which 
so  far  are  confined  to  the  pages  of  the  philosophical  journals. 
This  does  not  indicate  my  opinion  of  their  value;  the  last  few 
years  have  seen  an  imusual  amount  of  acute  and  original  think- 
ing, some  of  which  conceivably  may  bulk  large  in  the  immedi- 
ate future. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I.    SCOTTISH  REALISM 

PAOB 

Section  i.    Reid.    Thomas  Brown 

I.    Introduction i 

^^2-6.    Thomas  Reid     .     , 3 

7.  Dugald   Stewart 12 

8.  Thomas   Brown 13 

Section  2.    Hamilton.     Mansel.    The  Edinburgh 

Reviewers 
^^^  1-7.    Sir  William  Hamilton 16 

8.  Dean  Mansel 29 

9.  Francis  Jeffrey 32 

10.  Sydney  Smith 33 

11.  Sir  James  Mackintosh 34 

Section   3.    Other   Intuitionalists.     Calderwood. 
Martineau.    Ferrier 

1.  The  Scottish  School 36 

2.  Henry   Calderwood 38 

3.  James  McCosh 39 

^^^  4.    James  Martineau 40 

^^    5-7.    James  Ferrier 41 

CHAPTER  II.    THE  UTILITARIANS 

Section   i.    Bentham.    James  Mill 

I.    Introduction 49 

^^   2-4.    Jeremy  Bentham 50 

' ^.-     5-1 1.    James  Mill 55 

ix 


X  Contents 

PAGE 

Section  2.    John  Stuart  Mill 64 

Section  3.    The    Philosophical    Radicals.       Bain. 
Austin.    J.  F.  Stephen.    Sidgwick 

I.     George  Grote 86 

^     2.    Alexander  Bain 87 

3.  John  Austin     . 91 

4.  J.  F.  Stephen 92 

,.  5.     Henry   Sidgwick 93 

CHAPTER  III.    AUTHORITY  AND  REASON  IN 
THEOLOGY 

Section    i.    Thomas  Arnold.    The  Oxford   Move- 
ment.   Newman 

1.  Richard  Whately 96 

2.  Thomas  Arnold 97 

3.  The  Oxford  Movement 100 

4-9.     John  Henry  Newman loi 

10.     W.   G.  Ward 109 

Section  2.    Liberalism    in    Theology.     Coleridge. 
Maurice.    Matthew  Arnold 

I.     Wordsworth no 

2-3.     Coleridge in 

4.  F.  D.  Maurice 116 


Chas.    Kingsley 120 

J.  R.  Seeley 121 

Benjamin  Jowett 122 

The  Rationalists 123 

J.  A.  Froude 125 

Matthew  Arnold 125 


CHAPTER  IV.    NATURALISM  AND  EVOLUTION 

Section  i.    Thomas  Buckle.    Darwin  and  Evolu- 
tion 


Contents  xi 


PAGE 


I.     Robert  Owen.    Thomas  Buckle 128 

2-4.     Darwin 131 

Section  2.    Herbert  Spencer 135 

Section  3.     G.  H.  Lewes 166 

Section  4.     Thomas  Huxley .  174 

Section  5.    Other  Representatives  of  Naturalism. 
Clifford.     Naturalistic  Ethics 

1.  John  Tyndall 184 

2.  George  Meredith.     Grant  Allen 184 

3.  Henry  Maudsley 185 

4.  W.   K.   Qifford 186 

5.  W.  W.  Reade 189 

6.  The  Positivists 189 

7.  George  Meredith 191 

8.  Edith  Simcox 193 

9.  Leslie  Stephen 194 

Section  6.    Evolution  and  Religion.    Browning 

1.  Evolution  and  Theism 197 

2.  John  Fiske 198        yi 

3.  Joseph  Le  Conte 199 

4.  G.  J.   Romanes 199 

5.  The  Duke  of  Argyle.    Henry  Drummond    .      .  200 

6.  Benjamin  Kidd 201 

7-9.     Browning .  202 

CHAPTER  V.    ABSOLUTE  IDEALISM 

Section  i.    Transcendentalism  in  Literature.  Car- 
LYLE.     Emerson 

I.    Introduction 207 

2-4.     Carlyle 208 

5-8.     Emerson        213 


xii  Contents 

PAGE 

^^^^ECTiON  2.    T.  H.  Green 

I.    Hutchinson  Stirling 220 

' ^^2-17.    T.  H.  Green 220 

18.    John  and  Edward  Caird 248 

^^^  Section  3.    F.  H.  Bradley 250 

^^  Section  4.    Bernard  Bosanquet 264 

^:.  Section  5.    Josiah  Royce 283^^ 

Section  6.  The  Idealistic  School.  McTaggart. 
HowisoN.  Hocking.  Laurie.  Seth 
Pringle-Pattison 

1.  English  Idealists 297 

2.  American  Idealists 298 

3.  H.  H.  Joachim 299 

4.  J.  M.  E.  McTaggart  ........  300 

5.  G.  H.  Howison 303 

/  6.    W.  E.  Hocking 304 

^    7.     S.   S.   Laurie 307 

^  8.    Andrew  Seth  Pringle-Pattison 309 

CHAPTER    VI.      PERSONAL    IDEALISM,     PAN- 
PSYCHISM,  AND  REALISM 

Section  i.  Personality  and  Religion.  Personal 
Idealism 

1.  Introduction 315 

2.  Tennyson 317 

3.  A.  C.  Eraser 319 

4.  A.  J.  Balfour 320 

5.  W.  R.  Sorley.    Personal  Idealism     .     .     .     .  322 

6.  John  Grote 323 

7.  Theism        324 

Section  2.    Panpsychism 

^  I.     Introduction 325 


Contents  xiii 

PACK 

2.  Samuel  Butler 326 

3.  James  Hinton 326 

^.     Carveth  Read 327 

^^5-9.    James  Ward 328 

10-13.     C.  A.  Strong 335 

Section  3.    Realism.     Hodgson.     Hobhouse.     San- 

TAYANA 

1.  Epistemological  Realism  .     .     .     .     .     .     .  339 

2.  Physical  Realism.    Thomas  Case     ....  341 

3-5.     Shadworth  Hodgson 343 

6-7.    L.  T.  Hobhouse 348- 

Y^^8-ii.     George  Santayana 351- 

^  12.     Robert  Adamson 357 


CHAPTER  VII.    PRAGMATISM       ^ 

Section  i.    Peirce.    Schiller 

I.     Introduction 359 

^  2.     C.  S.  Peirce 360 

3-6.     F.  C.  S.  Schiller 362 


Section  2.    William  James 368 

ECTioN  3.    John  Dewey 388 

Section  4.    Other  Pragmatists.    Pearson.    Baldwin 

1.  Other  Pragmatists 406 

2.  Karl  Pearson 407 

^   3.    J.  M.   Baldwin 409 

CHAPTER  VIII.    NEO-REALISM  "^ 

Section  i.    English  Neo-realism.    G.  E.  Moore 

/^  1-2.    Introduction 411 

3-6.     G.  E.  Moore 413 


xiv  Contents 

PAGB 

Section  2.    S.  Alexander 

1-5.     S.   Alexander 421 

6.     Other  Neo-realists 428 


V 


ECTiON  3.     Bertrand  Russell 429 

Section  4.    American  Neo-realism.  Perry.  Holt 

I.    The  New  Realism 440 

2-3.     R.  B.  Perry 441 

''^      4.     E.  B.  Holt 446 

5.     E.  G.  Spaulding 448 

Section  5.    Conclusion  .     .     .     •     •     •     .     .     .  449 


ENGLISH  AND  AMERICAN 
PHILOSOPHY  SINCE  1800 


ENGLISH  AND  AMERICAN 
PHILOSOPHY  SINCE  1800 


CHAPTER  I 
SCOTTISH  REALISM 

§  I.  Reid.    Thomas  Brown 

I.  The  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  in  England  was  one 
of  those  recurrent  periods  when  speculative  curiosity  about  the 
bases  of  human  existence  and  human  belief  seems  almost  to 
have  vanished  from  the  mind.  It  is  only  in  the  field  of  po- 
litical philosophy  that  genuine  creative  activity  is  visible;  here 
indeed  three  names  lend  to  the  period  real  distinction.  In 
William  Godwin,  a  thin  but  acute  intelligence,  we  find  a  sin- 
cere pyassion  for  liberty  and  equal  justice  that  is  still  not  unim- 
pressive, though  it  is  turned  into  the  somewhat  shallow  chan- 
nels of  a  rationalistic  and  individualistic  logic  which  renders 
it  an  easy  prey  to  the  scornful.  Quite  at  the  opposite  extreme 
from  Godwin  stands  the  powerful  and  florid  personality  of 
Burke,  who  was  uttering  noble  truisms  to  prove  that  liberty 
is  an  overrated  blessing,  and  that  reforms  are  only  justified 
when  they  involve  no  element  of  risk  to  men  of  property  and 
breeding.  Meanwhile  Jeremy  Bentham,  engaged  in  trying  to 
get  an  English  ministry  interested  in  the  good  work  of  re- 
forming law  and  building  model  prisons,  was  already  beginning 
to  suspect  that  something  besides  ignorance  and  inattention  lies 
back  of  that  lack  of  passionate  regard  for  the  greatest  good  of 


'  2'  '  ' '  English  and  American  Philosophy 

the  greatest  number  which  rulers  sometimes  display,  and  was 
laying  the  foundation  for  the  hardheaded  and  non-Utopian 
radicalism  about  which  cluster  the  most  influential  intellectual 
tendencies  of  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  But 
even  Bentham,  although  there  are  to  be  found  in  him  the  roots 
of  a  comprehensive  utilitarian  philosophy  that  later  becomes 
explicit  in  James  Mill,  has  almost  no  interest  in  first  principles 
except  as  they  lend  themselves  directly  to  practical  ends. 

Two  opposing  tendencies  of  thought  were  in  possession  of  the 
field  at  the  opening  of  the  new  century.  Both  of  these  had 
their  center  of  gravity  in  an  empirical  observation  of  the 
human  mind,  and  both  were  marked  by  a  plodding  patience  of 
analysis  rather  than  by  any  inspired  sense  for  the  vitalities  of 
the  human  spirit.  In  a  little  group  of  literary  men,  influenced 
partly  by  their  own  genius,  and  in  part  also  by  the  new  Ger- 
man romanticism,  a  more  humanistic  attitude  toward  things 
of  the  mind  was  already  making  its  appyearance;  but  it  was  not 
till  later  that  this  came  to  have  any  wide  influence  on  prevalent 
ways  of  thought.  For  the  present,  the  few  who  took  an  in- 
terest in  philosophy  at  all  found  themselves  divided  chiefly  on 
the  question  of  whether  mental  processes  are  to  be  explained  by 
the  laws  of  association  at  work  upon  the  material  of  sense,  or 
whether  there  is  need  to  call  in  besides  certain  ultimate  and  un- 
explainable  truths  of  intuition.  The  first  tendency,  to  which 
the  Utilitarian  movement  was  presently  to  attach  itself,  had  its 
chief  prophet  in  David  Hartley;  and  its  most  vigorous  ex- 
ponent in  the  latter  part  of  the  century  was  the  radical  Uni- 
tarian minister  Joseph  Priestley.  The  other  and  opposing 
tendency  goes  back  to  the  revolt  of  Thomas  Reid  against  the 
sceptical  idealism  of  Hume.  It  was  this  second  school — of 
Scottish  intuitionalism — which  occupied  the  most  commanding 
position  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Profess- 
ing as  it  did  to  stand  as  the  champion  of  religion  and  morality 
against  scepticism  and  materialism,  it  was  naturally  in  better 
odor  in  academic  circles,  and  for  the  time  being  it  had  an 


Thomas  Reid  3 

advantage  also  in  the  comparative  talents  of  its  defenders.  It 
will  be  convenient,  therefore,  to  take  the  so-called  Scottish 
school  as  the  starting  point  for  the  present  exposition.  And 
this  will  prove  unintelligible  without  going  back  to  Reid  him- 
self, though  Reid  of  course  belongs  wholly  to  the  preceding 
century. 

2.  Since  the  vogue  of  German  Idealism,  it  has  been  com- 
monly assumed  that  all  earlier  forms  of  intuitionalism  have 
been  superseded  once  for  all  by  the  work  of  Kant  and  his  suc- 
cessors. That  the  Scotch  philosophers  were  far  less  subtle  in 
their  metaphysics  is  obviously  true;  but  this  is  not  in  every 
way  a  disadvantage.  Kant  approached  his  problem  under  the 
sway  of  highly  elaborated  and  technical  prepossessions,  and  he 
felt  compelled  to  shape  his  answer  with  these  always  in  view. 
He  was  in  much  the  same  case  as  the  liberal  theologian  who 
sets  out  to  free  religion  from  its  dogmatism,  but  who  feels  at 
liberty  to  do  so  only  by  a  revaluation  of  the  accepted  formu- 
lations of  the  past.  In  both  instances  the  task  might  have 
been  easier,  and  better  done,  if  it  had  been  approached  in  a 
simpler  and  more  direct  way. 

The  exaltation  of  the  part  which  underived  and  undebatable 
principles  play  in  knowledge  might  easily  lend  itself,  as  later 
critics  were  fond  of  pointing  out,  to  a  readiness  to  accept  as 
final  whatever  is  familiar  and  congenial  to  the  mind,  and  so  to 
an  illiberal  conservatism  in  politics  and  religion.  In  calling 
itself  the  philosophy  of  Common  Sense,  the  Scottish  school  did 
nothing  to  lessen  this  danger.  Interpreted  cautiously  the 
phrase  is  not  objectionable,  even  if  it  is  not  altogether  felici- 
tous. The  intuitionists  wanted  to  repudiate  merely  reasoned 
or  speculative  conclusions,  in  favor  of  those  first  principles, 
shown  ultimate  and  general  in  analysis,  which  we  are  under  the 
necessity  of  taking  for  granted  in  the  business  of  life  without 
being  able  to  give  for  them  a  logical  proof.  Judgments  of 
"common  sense,"  in  addition  to  the  fact  of  their  general  accept- 
ance and  their  importance  for  conduct,  have  also  this  char- 


4  English  and  American  Philosophy 

acter  of  sure  immediacy.  They  go  straight  to  the  mark  by  a 
sort  of  quick  intuitive  decision,  and  in  consequence  may  serve 
to  supply  a  title  for  a  philosophy  which  seeks  to  emphasize 
the  fundamental  and  unreasoned  foundations  of  belief.  But 
if  we  grow  a  little  careless,  an  appeal  to  common  sense  may 
well  tend  to  encourage  habits  of  mind  that  are  scarcely  to  be 
approved.  Instead  of  merely  standing  for  the  endeavor  to 
sift  out  what  are  in  fact  the  simple  underlying  assumptions  of 
experience  in  general,  it  may  mean  a  slovenly  habit  of  shirking 
difficult  analysis,  and  accepting  on  their  own  terms  the  dicta 
of  average  uncritical  opinion,  using  the  common  man's  dislike 
of  any  strenuous  exercise  of  the  intellect  to  discredit  the  more 
exacting  claims  of  philosophy.  And  in  some  of  the  lesser 
lights  of  the  Scottish  school  such  a  tendency  is  indeed  plainly 
in  evidence.  Reid  himself,  however,  is  open  to  criticism  in 
nothing  like  the  same  degree.  Reid  is  far  from  interpreting 
common  sense  in  terms  of  a  general  plebiscite.  "To  the  candid 
and  discerning  Few,"  he  remarks,  "I  appeal  as  the  only  com- 
petent judges.  If  they  disapprove,  I  am  probably  in  the 
wrong,  and  shall  be  ready  to  change  my  opinion  upon  con- 
viction. If  they  approve,  the  Many  will  at  last  yield  to  their 
authority,  as  they  always  do."  As  a  matter  of  fact  Reid  is 
putting  his  trust,  not  in  the  formulated  opinions  of  mankind, 
but  in  those  underlying  assumptions  "so  necessary  in  the  con- 
duct of  life  that  a  man  cannot  live  and  act  according  to  the 
rules  of  common  prudence  without  them,"  though  these  as- 
sumptions may  have  to  wait  upon  careful  philosophic  analysis 
to  get  recognition  and  expression.  What  at  bottom  he  is  main- 
taining is,  that  life  is  more  fundamental  than  reason  or  logic; 
that  our  most  inexpugnable  beliefs  grow  directly  out  of  the 
needs  of  life,  and  are  not  grounded  upon  argument,  because  ar- 
guments are  grounded  upon  them;  and  that  when  the  case  is 
so,  we  are  only  discrediting  philosophy  by  the  pretense  that  it 
is  not  so,  and  that  conviction  is  to  be  made  to  wait  upon 
reasoned  demonstration.    Belief,  in  a  word,  is  prior  to  reason- 


Thomas  Reid  5 

ing,  and  supplies  it  with  its  necessary  material;  "I  am  per- 
suaded that  the  unjust  live  by  faith  as  well  as  the  just.'*  In 
carrying  out  his  program,  Reid  it  is  true  leaves  much  to  be  de- 
sired. Frequently  his  analysis  stops  a  good  deal  short  of  the 
needs  of  the  case;  and  he  does  not  always  distinguish  as  clearly 
as  he  might  the  practical  postulates  of  experience,  from  the 
traditional  philosophical  machinery  of  self-evident  and  non- 
contingent  "truths  of  reason."  His  meaning,  however,  is 
sound;  and  in  his  demand  that  our  reasonings  should  presup- 
pose and  keep  true  to  the  practical  assurances  by  which  men 
live,  he  provides  the  only  possible  check  against  the  aberra- 
tions of  philosophy. 

3.  Reid's  own  work  centers  about  one  problem  in  particu- 
lar— our  knowledge  of  the  external  world.  Originally  an  ad- 
herent of  Berkeley's  doctrine,  the  sceptical  results  to  which  this 
led  in  Hume  had  startled  his  common  sense,  and  caused  him  to 
retrace  his  steps.  The  fundamental  vice  of  the  new  "way  of 
ideas"  he  thought  himself  to  have  discovered  in  its  uncritical 
acceptance  of  a  traditional  philosophical  opinion — that  in 
knowledge  there  is  need  of  some  intermediary  between  the  ob- 
ject and  the  perceiving  mind.  Locke's  ideas,  as  Reid  interprets 
them,  are  simply  the  remnants  of  the  old  and  ungrounded 
theory  of  substantial  images  that  pass  into  the  mind,  or  the 
brain,  from  the  things  themselves.  So  far  is  it  from  being  so, 
however,  that  we  know  directly  nothing  but  ideas,  that  we  do 
not  know  ideas  at  all,  for  the  excellent  reason  that  there  are  no 
such  things.  All  that  a  true  analysis  reveals  is  the  mental  act, 
— the  idea  is  not  something  on  which  this  activity  is  per- 
formed, but,  if  it  is  anything  at  all,  the  activity  itself, — and  the 
real  object.  There  is  an  original  principle  of  the  mind,  to  be 
accepted  without  explanation  because  it  is  already  involved  in 
all  explanation,  whereby  there  is  attached  to  a  sensation  a  be- 
lief in  the  present  existence  of  the  thing  perceived,  just  as  there 
is  present  in  memory  a  belief  in  the  past  existence  of  the  thing 
remembered.    This  belief  is  a  simple  act  of  the  mind,  which 


6  English  and  American  Philosophy 

cannot  be  further  analyzed  or  defined;  we  can  give  no  reason 
for  believing,  other  than  the  fact  that  this  is  the  way  our  minds 
work. 

When  one  starts  to  scrutinize  however  Reid's  position  more 
in  detail,  it  becomes  apparent  that  it  is  not  in  every  respect 
clearly  conceived,  and  that  it  contains  elements  of  unequal 
value.  As  against  subjectivism,  it  is  clearly  in  the  right  in 
maintaining  that  what  anyone  really  believes  himself  to  know 
is,  not  his  own  idea,  but  an  independent  object — in  perception, 
the  reality  of  an  external  world.  Reid  is  successful  in  showing 
not  only  that  this  is  the  correct  analysis  of  our  actual  con- 
viction, but  that  if  we  take  a  different  starting  point,  and  hold 
that  to  begin  with  we  only  know  the  mental,  we  shall  end  up 
also  by  knowing  only  the  mental,  and  so  land  in  practical 
scepticism.  It  seems  clear  that  if  nature — or,  as  Reid  himself 
would  put  it,  if  God — had  not  taken  things  into  its  own  hands, 
and  provided  us  with  a  belief  in  the  existence  of  the  physical 
world  more  primitive  than  an  uncertain  inference  from  mental 
data,  our  chance  of  ever  attaining  it  would  have  been  pre- 
carious. When,  however,  we  ask  for  a  more  exact  account  of 
the  nature  of  the  situation,  difficulties  and  obscurities  begin  to 
creep  in.  One  can  perhaps  best  start  from  the  point  which  is 
clearest,  calling  attention  to  complications  as  they  arise. 

4.  Now  in  connection  with  the  so-called  secondary  qualities 
of  matter,  Reid's  meaning  is  plain  enough.  It  starts  by  em- 
phasizing the  sharp  distinction  between  sensation,  and  objec- 
tive quality.  A  sensation,  say  the  smell  of  a  rose,  can  be  known 
to  exist  on  occasion  when  an  object  acts  upon  the  sense  organ. 
But  this  sensation  is  not  the  thing  we  know  in  perception. 
What  we  perceive  is  "some  power,  quality  or  virtue  in  the 
rose";  the  sensation  is  merely  a  sign  which  nature  has  consti- 
tuted with  the  capacity  for  calling  up  or  suggesting  the  rose 
which  produces  the  sensation.  Furthermore  for  one  who,  like 
Reid,  accepts  unquestioningly  the  science  of  his  day,  it  is  just 
as  certain  that  the  sensation  of  smell  is  not  like  any  quality  in 


Thomas  Reid  7 

the  object,  as  that  it  is  not  the  quality  in  the  object.  It  is  this 
fact  on  which  the  so-called  "representative"  theory  of  knowl- 
edge suffers  shipwreck,  since,  if  the  sensation  is  not  like  the 
quality,  it  cannot  represent  it.  In  the  case  of  secondary  attri- 
butes, accordingly,  the  nature  of  "perception"  is  easily  defined; 
the  perception  of  an  odor  is  the  sensation  of  smell,  plus  the 
intuitive  and  unreasoned  belief  that  an  external  cause  exists 
which  is  producing  it. 

The  primary  qualities,  however,  introduce  a  complication; 
for  the  difference  between  primary  qualities  and  secondary,  ac- 
cording to  Reid,  is  just  this,  that  the  former  involve  the  recog- 
nition, not  merely  of  a  cause, — in  itself  unknown, — but  of  a 
specific  character  attaching  to  this  cause  and  constituting  its 
nature.  It  is  the  distinction  between  an  obscure  and  occult 
quality,  and  one  of  which  we  have  a  clear  and  distinct  con- 
ception. And  the  question  thereupon  arises,  whence  comes  this 
new  and  positive  knowledge  of  objective  qualities.  Here  also 
Reid's  answer  is  plain  up  to  a  point;  the  quality  is  "suggested" 
to  the  mind,  and  a  belief  in  it  induced,  by  the  appropriate  sen- 
sation. This  is  to  be  sure  suggestion  of  a  rather  special  sort. 
Ordinarily  when  one  thing  suggests  another,  the  two  have  both 
been  in  experience  together  before;  in  perception  the  fact  is, 
rather,  that  a  power  acts  by  nature  to  bring  about  directly  the 
appearance  of  new  notions,  conjure  them  up  "by  a  natural  kind 
of  magic."  Thus  touch  sensations  suggest  the  new  qualities  of 
extension,  solidity,  and  motion.  In  the  case  of  visible  figure, 
sensation  is  even  dispensed  with  altogether,  and  the  quality  is 
suggested  by  the  material  impression  on  the  nervous  system 
merely.  But  now  the  important  thing  to  notice  is,  that  in  any 
case,  between  the  new  quality  and  the  sensation  there  is  always 
a  total  difference.  A  pin  has  length,  thickness,  figure  and 
weight;  a  sensation  can  have  none  of  these  characters.  Ac- 
cordingly it  follows  once  more  that  to  perceive  anything,  it  is 
not  necessary  that  we  have  some  impression,  sensation,  or  idea 
in  our  mind  which  is  like  it.    There  is  no  double  object — one 


8  English  and  American  Philosophy 

sun  in  the  heavens  and  one  in  the  mind.  The  sun  we  see  is  the 
real  sun;  we  are  so  constituted  by  nature  that  the  sensations 
we  receive  are  the  means  of  calling  up  immediately  real  quali- 
ties which,  as  we  can  make  quite  sure  by  bringing  them  into 
comparison,  are  no  more  like  sensations  than  the  toothache  is 
like  a  triangle.  I  feel  an  object  as  hard.  What  happens  is, 
that  I  have  a  feeling  of  touch  which  enables  me  to  conclude, 
without  any  reasoning  or  comparing  of  ideas,  that  an  external 
reality  exists  whose  parts  stick  so  closely  together  that  they 
cannot  be  displaced  without  considerable  force;  and  this  latter 
character  obviously  has  nothing  in  common  with  the  touch  sen- 
sation which  suggests  it. 

5.  But  now  such  a  statement  of  the  situation  gives  rise  to 
more  questions  than  seem  to  have  occurred  to  Reid.  Reid  is  so 
impressed  by  the  difference  between  sensations  like  touch  or 
smell,  and  the  qualities  recognized  by  science  as  belonging  to 
matter,  that  he  takes  it  for  granted  that  nothing  more  is 
needed  in  order  to  establish  the  exclusively  non-mental  charac- 
ter of  the  latter;  he  fails  to  ask  himself  in  what  form  then  they 
do  exist  in  so  far  as  they  are  within  the  precincts  of  the  know- 
ing mind.  The  very  use  of  the  word  "suggestion"  implies  that 
we  are  operating  after  all  with  something  in  the  nature  of 
"ideas";  and  the  fact,  if  it  be  a  fact,  that  a  sensation  has  the 
power  to  call  up  a  qualitatively  new  idea  which  is  different 
from  itself,  need  not  of  necessity  prevent  this  from  being  a  new 
idea,  rather  than  a  purely  non-mental  existence.  All  that  Reid 
shows  is,  that  it  is  not  like  certain  other  specified  mental  facts; 
he  offers  no  proof  that  it  may  not  equally  in  some  sense  be  a 
part  of  our  mental  furniture.  It  would  seem  that  what  Reid 
vaguely  had  in  mind  could  be  translated  into  terms  of  rdor 
tions.  Scientific  knowledge  is  primarily  relational  in  its  con- 
tent, and  Reid's  description  of  primary  qualities  reduces  in 
point  of  fact  to  relational  terms ;  accordingly  if  we  understand 
him  as  meaning  that,  through  sense  experience,  we  are  led  to 
recognize  also  relationships  not  themselves  reducible  to  sensa- 


Thomas  Reid  9 

tional  quality,  we  shall  be  able  to  satisfy  most  of  the  require- 
ments of  his  language.  But  even  thus  there  would  remain  the 
same  point  to  be  settled:  what  is  the  mental  status  of  these 
relations,  since  apparently  they  are,  in  knowledge,  somehow 
present  "in  the  mind"  even  though  they  belong  also  to  the 
world  which  knowledge  apprehends? 

In  the  absence  of  any  explicit  dealing  with  this  question  it  is 
not  easy  to  determine  just  what  Reid's  "realism"  amounts  to. 
At  times  his  insistence  that  we  know  the  object  immediately 
seems  to  imply,  as  later  on  Hamilton  tried  to  interpret  it,  that 
the  object  is  literally  present  in  perception  in  its  own  person, 
with  nothing  mental  of  any  sort  to  mediate  it.  On  the  other 
hand,  "natural  suggestion"  seems  rather  to  point  to  the  sup- 
posal  that  the  immediacy  of  the  object  is  only  the  immediate 
conviction  of  its  actual  existence,  plus  the  presence  of  what 
must  after  all  be  called  an  "idea"  of  its  qualities.  Perhaps  the 
best  reason  for  supposing  that  Reid  might,  had  he  envisaged 
the  problem  more  sharply,  have  found  himself  committed 
to  the  first  of  these  interpretations,  is  supplied  by  his 
further  theory  of  the  nature  of  conception.  At  first  sight,  in- 
deed, when  we  turn  to  the  knowledge  of  objects  not  at  the 
moment  open  to  perception,  but  absent  in  time  or  space,  it 
seems  less  easy  to  dispense  with  an  idea  to  mediate  the  knowl- 
edge; nor  is  there  the  same  reason  here  for  repudiating  a  "re- 
semblance" between  the  idea  and  the  original  perception.  The 
denial  of  anything  that  can  be  called  an  idea  in  connection  with 
thought,  memory,  or  imagination  is,  however,  a  point  on  which 
Reid  is  explicit.  It  is  true  this  denial  loses  something  of  its 
significance  when  we  remember  that  Reid  understands  Locke 
and  his  followers  to  mean,  that  the  image  is  a  quasi-material 
efflux  or  emanation  from  the  object,  which  equally  with  the 
object  itself  is  separate  from  the  mind,  and  whose  only  ad- 
vantage rests  on  the  fact  that  it  does  not  lie  at  a  distance,  but 
has  got  close  up  to  or  inside  the  brain.  Had  his  attention  not 
thus  been  directed  to  a  misconception,  he  might  not  have  found 


lo  English  and  American  Philosophy 

the  belief  in  ideas  so  absurd.  The  fact  remains  however  that 
he  does  persist  in  supposing  that  he  has  got  rid  of  ideas  in  any 
sense,  even  as  modifications  of  the  mind  itself.  And  in  con- 
struing the  situation  without  them,  he  shows  a  good  deal  of 
acuteness.  The  thought  or  idea  of  an  object  is  to  be  inter- 
preted, he  maintains,  not  as  a  duplication  of  the  object,  from 
which  the  object  is  then  inferred,  but  as  an  act  of  the  mind 
which  issues  directly  on  the  object  itself.  Even  in  imagining 
an  unreal  object,  there  still  is  no  question  of  an  idea;  in  think- 
ing of  a  centaur,  it  is  actually  a  centaur  of  which  we  think,  and 
not  the  idea  or  image  of  one.^  And  in  some  interpretation  it 
would  be  difficult  not  to  agree  that  this  does  indeed  represent 
the  fact.  But  because  we  are  not  thinking  about  the  idea, 
it  need  not  follow  that  no  idea  is  there.  And  how  an  unreal 
object  can  be  at  all  when  it  has  no  existence  outside  the  mind, 
and  there  is  no  idea  in  any  sense  within  the  mind,  Reid  makes 
no  effort  to  explain. 

6.  But  now  if  knowledge  is,  in  thought  and  memory,  suffi- 
ciently accounted  for  as  a  mental  operation  directed  upon  the 
object  itself,  it  might  be  aisked  whether,  in  perception  also,  sen- 
sations do  not  occupy  a  somewhat  anomolous  place,  as  mental 
states  intervening  as  "signs"  between  the  mind's  activity  and 
the  thing.  And  as  a  matter  of  fact  two  tendencies  show  them- 
selves here  in  Reid's  discussions.  When  he  is  engaged  in  the 
actual  introspective  analysis  of  perception,  he  recognizes  un- 
equivocally the  mental  existence  of  qualitative  sense  data. 
But  a  disposition  is  apparent  also  to  pare  the  fact  away,  until 
some  doubt  remains  as  to  just  what  after  all  is  left.^  In  the 
first  place,  sensation  is  used  continually  as  synonymous  with 
feeling;  and  at  times  the  border  line  between  secondary  quali- 
ties, and  the  quality  of  agreeableness  or  painfulness,  seems 
practically  to  disappear.  And  now  further,  we  are  told,  feeling 
is  a  "mental  operation"  again;  at  least  it  is  so  close  to  it  that 

^Essays  on  the  Intellectual  Powers  of  Man,  Essay  IV,  Chap.  II. 
'Cf.  Essay  I,  Chap.  I,  12. 


Thomas  Reid  ii 

it  is  not  worth  while  stopping  to  pick  our  terms.  Reid  has  of 
course  something  to  go  on  here;  when  we  "feel  a  feeling,"  there 
is  no  object  distinguished  from  the  act  in  the  sense  in  which  a 
thing  which  we  perceive  is  distinct  from  the  perceiving.  But 
if  it  be  true  that  what  is  felt  is  inseparable  from  the  act  of 
feeling,  this  is  itself  a  reason  why  the  "operation"  called  feeling 
should  be  put  on  a  different  basis  from  the  operation  called 
knowing.  An  act  which  is  identified  with  a  definite  bit  of 
qualitative  being,  whether  it  be  the  quality  of  touch  or  odor, 
or  only  of  pleasantness  and  pain,  can  continue  to  be  called  an 
"act"  only  after  careful  discrimination.  To  "feel  a  feeling" 
means  indeed,  merely,  "to  have  a  feeling,"  or  "a  feeling  is 
there";  and  this  is  just  the  mental  existent,  or  Lockian  idea, 
which  Reid  professes  himself  unable  to  discover. 

There  is  one  sensation  in  particular  where  the  ambiguities 
which  attend  Reid's  doctrine  are  especially  conspicuous — 
that  of  color.  He  has,  in  the  first  place,  in  order  to  maintain 
the  thesis  that  there  is  no  identity  of  character  between  sen- 
sations and  objective  qualities,  to  remove  extensity  from  color 
sensation,  since  extensity  is  for  him  objective.  And  even  in 
the  case  of  bare  color  he  has  a  difficulty  to  meet.  It  seems 
clear  that  the  naive  mind  locates  color  as  such — what  Reid 
calls  the  "appearance  of  color" — actually  in  the  object.  But 
Reid  cannot  easily  admit  this.  Since  for  him,  with  his  scien- 
tific prepossessions,  color  is  objective  only  as  smell  is  objective, 
— as  an  unknown  power  capable  of  producing  sensations  in  us, 
— and  since  to  allow  that  nature  creates  a  mistaken  belief  that 
apparent  color  is  in  the  object  would  be  to  throw  doubt  upon 
an  instinctive  principle  of  common  sense,  he  is  forced  to  hold 
that  we  do  not  naturally  tend  to  objectify  color-quality;  one 
gathers  from  Reid  that  men  generally  quite  overlook  the  pe- 
culiar quality  of  color,  as  they  do  the  sensational  quality  of 
touch,  in  their  interest  in  those  further  objective  properties  of 
which  it  is  a  sign.  To  fortify  this  judgment  Reid  makes  use 
of  both  of  his  expedients,  and  color  is  translated  now  into  the 


12  English  and  American  Philosophy 

"act  of  a  percipient,"  and  now  into  hedonic  feeling.  "It  is  not 
easy  to  persuade  the  vulgar  that,  in  seeing  a  coloured  body, 
when  the  light  is  not  too  strong  nor  the  eye  inflamed,  they  have 
any  sensation  or  feeling  at  all" — this  has  not  the  least  plausi- 
bility except  as  we  reduce  color-sensation  to  the  mere  feeling  of 
painfulness.^ 

7.  The  most  eminent  of  Reid's  early  disciples  is  Dugald 
Stewart,  who  occupied  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  chair  of 
Moral  Philosophy  at  Edinburgh  to  which  he  was  elected  in 
1785,  and  who  won  through  the  medium  of  his  teaching  a  com- 
manding position  among  the  intellectual  lights  of  his  day. 
Stewart  had  all  the  gifts  that  go  to  make  up  a  successful  college 
professor.  With  an  attractive  presence  and  a  facile  flow  of 
language,  he  combined  a  suave  and  unaggressive  personality, 
and  a  readiness  to  hold  in  abeyance  whatever  in  his  opinions 
was  likely  to  give  offence  in  powerful  quarters,  which  enabled 
him  to  perform  his  duties  with  universal  applause.  His  main 
influence  however  is  in  the  way  of  popularizing  philosophy 
rather  than  advancing  it.  This  was  his  own  professed  interest 
in  his  academic  work — to  teach  philosophy  as  a  liberal  and 
elegant  discipline  bearing  on  the  "work  and  adornment  of  hu- 
man life";  and  his  published  lectures  in  consequence  show  only 
occasional  lapses  into  rigorous  metaphysical  argument.  For 
the  most  part  he  follows  closely  in  Reid's  footsteps,  though 
with  a  number  of  minor  changes,  many  of  them  improvements. 
Thus  the  conception  of  the  "principles  of  common  sense"  is 
rendered  rather  more  precise  by  Stewart;  he  prefers  to  call 
them  Fundamental  Laws  of  Human  Belief,  or  Constituent  Ele- 
ments of  Human  Reason.  He  thinks  of  them  definitely,  that 
is,  not  as  "objects  of  knowledge,"  but  as  assumptions  "neces- 
sarily and  unconsciously  involved  in"  the  exercise  of  our 
faculties;  not  as  principles  or  truths  from  which  knowledge  can 
be  derived  by  way  of  deduction,  but  as  the  "necessary  con- 
ditions on  which  every  step  of  the  deduction  tacitly  proceeds." 

^Ibid.,  Essay  II,  Chap.  XVIII. 


Dug  aid  Stewart  13 

Stewart  makes  one  modification  of  Reid^s  doctrine  of  percep- 
tion, by  drawing  a  distinction  between  the  mere  momentary 
existence  of  din.  objective  quality  while  we  are  perceiving  it, 
and  its  continued  existence  independent  of  our  perception.  It 
is  only  the  first  that  is  sufficiently  accounted  for  by  intuition; 
^'independent"  existence  is  the  result  of  experience,  due  to  the 
discovery  that  we  cannot,  as  in  the  case  of  imagination,  dismiss 
or  recall  the  object  as  we  please. 

8.  It  is  to  two  younger  contemporaries  of  Stewart  that  the 
significant  developments  of  Reid^s  philosophy  are  due — 
Thomas  Brown  and  Sir  William  Hamilton.  Brown  was  a 
precocious  yoxmg  philosopher  who  already  at  the  age  of  twenty 
had  published  a  respectable  criticism  of  Darwin's  Zoonomia. 
Called  upon  to  substitute  for  Dugald  Stewart  when  the  latter's 
health  failed  him,  he  filled  this  rather  exacting  position  with 
remarkable  success,  and  in  18 10  received  the  appointment  to  a 
professorship.  Brown  was  perhaps  handicapped  by  his  own 
facility,  especially  when  taken  in  connection  with  the  fact  that 
he  had  no  first-rate  contemporaries  to  set  the  pace  for  him ;  he 
seems  very  quickly  to  have  felt  that  the  last  word  had  been 
said,  and  to  have  been  indeed  more  solicitous  of  his  reputation 
as  a  minor  poet  than  as  a  philosopher.  When  published 
shortly  after  his  death  his  Lectures  attained  a  striking  literary 
success,  which  proved  as  short-lived  however  as  it  was  unusual. 

In  its  most  general  form.  Brown's  correction  of  Reid  lay  in 
the  protest  against  a  too  liberal  allowance  of  principles  or  facul- 
ties. Unquestionably  Reid  had  been  far  too  little  critical  in 
this  respect;  almost  any  fairly  ultimate  fact  of  human  nature 
was  permitted  to  become  a  candidate  for  his  list.  Thus  there  is 
a  faculty  that  leads  us  to  speak  the  truth,  to  confide  in  the  ve- 
racity of  others,  to  interpret  facial  expression,  to  accept  consti- 
tuted authority;  and  there  is  of  course  to  each  distinguish- 
able psychological  operation  the  allowance  of  a  separate  faculty 
• — ^perception,  imagination,  conception,  memory,  and  the  like. 
Interpreted  sympathetically  there  is  an  important  element  of 


14  English  and  American  Philosophy 

truth  in  Reid's  contention  which  the  associationists  missed;  he 
recognized,  as  they  did  not,  the  presence  of  that  instinctive  ele- 
ment in  human  nature  which  modem  biology  has  placed  on  a 
firm  footing.  But  he  failed  to  separate  instinct  clearly  in  its 
distinctive  character  from  the  intellectual  perception  of 
"truths";  and  instead  of  an  organization  of  the  field  of  instinct, 
which  would  have  needed  in  any  case  a  far  more  adequate 
understanding  of  its  biological  basis  than  was  possible  at  the 
time,  he  left  only  a  collection  of  heterogeneous  facts.  Brown 
however  is  in  even  less  of  a  position  than  Reid  to  supply  this 
lack;  and  in  the  process  of  removing  the  excrescences  of  the 
Scottish  tradition,  association  encroaches  so  far  upon  intuition 
that  it  becomes  doubtful  whether  Brown  might  not  rather  be 
classed  as  a  member  of  the  opposing  school. 

Of  the  few  intuitions  which  he  still  leaves  standing,  the 
most  important  is  that  of  causation;  though  even  here  the 
situation  is  simplified.  Reid,  and  after  him  Stewart,  had 
held  consistently  enough  that  for  scientific  procedure  causa- 
tion means  no  more  than  invariable  succession;  the  scien- 
tist is  engaged  solely  in  formulating  the  laws  of  phenomena, 
though  intuition  enters  as  an  instinctive  belief  in  uniformity. 
But  Reid  also  thought  that  there  was  another  and  metaphysical 
meaning  to  causality.  The  laws  of  nature  are  the  rules  of 
nature  according  to  which  the  effects  are  produced;  but  there 
must  also  be  a  cause  which  operates  according  to  these  rules, 
an  agent  behind  the  scenes.  This  is  a  meaning  important  for 
philosophy  even  though  it  is  not  of  any  use  in  science;  and  it 
calls  for  a  further  original  principle  in  the  form  of  a  self-evi- 
dent intuition  that  every  effect  in  nature  must  have  an  efficient 
cause  with  power  to  produce  it.  Brown  does  away  altogether 
with  causality  in  this  second  sense;  the  notion  of  power,  if  it 
has  any  meaning  at  all,  is  no  more  than  a  recognition  of  the 
similarity  of  the  future  to  the  past.  Even  the  creative  activity 
of  God,  which  reason  informs  us  is  unavoidably  required  to  ex- 
plain the  natural  universe,  is  reducible  to  the  need  for  be- 


Thomas  Brown  15 

lieving  that  certain  occurrences  in  God's  mind  are  the  invari- 
able antecedents  of  natural  phenomena;  there  is  no  third  cir- 
cumstance binding  as  it  were  the  will  of  the  Creator  to  the 
things  which  are  to  be.  While  however  Brown  agrees  with 
Hume  in  reducing  causation  to  uniformity,  he  rejects  the  sup- 
position that  the  mere  experiences  of  succession  are  enough  to 
account  for  it.  Rather,  the  belief  in  uniformity  is  inexplicable 
unless  we  supjwse  it  brought  to  experience  in  the  first  place; 
"a  stone  has  fallen  a  thousand  times"  differs  as  much  from  "will 
always  fall,"  as  does  "a  stone  has  fallen  once."  The  invariable- 
ness  is  assumed,  not  inferred  from  preceding  phenomena; 
unless  we  were  so  built  as  instinctively  to  expect  the  future  to 
be  similar  to  the  past,  the  belief  would  never  be  generated  in 
us  by  the  mere  observation  of  any  number  of  successive  events. 
A  corresponding  simplification  shows  in  the  treatment  of 
Reid's  theory  of  perception.  Here  Brown  repudiates  outright, 
to  begin  with,  Reid's  attack  upon  ideas  or  images,  and  calls  at- 
tention to  the  way  in  which  this  is  misdirected  through  taking 
too  seriously  what  is  meant  only  as  a  metaphor.  An  idea  is, 
Brown  maintains,  not  the  emanation  from  an  object  imported 
into  the  brain,  but  a  modification  of  the  mind  itself,  a  particular 
form  of  the  mind's  existence.  Now  it  seems  self-evident  to 
Brown  that  neither  Reid,  nor  any  other  self-respecting  philoso- 
pher, could  really  mean  that  an  object  is  present  bodily  in  the 
mind.  Nothing  can  be  in  the  mind  but  a  modification  of  the 
mind's  own  nature;  and  therefore  such  a  mental  modification 
is  always  the  medium  through  which  a  knowledge  of  objects 
is  effected.  Accordingly  a  part  of  Reid's  doctrine  of  per- 
ception disappears.  Certain  sensations  are,  so  Stewart  fol- 
lowing Reid  had  said,  accompanied  with  an  irresistible  belief 
in  the  existence  of  certain  qualities  of  external  objects.  Brown 
drops  the  reference  to  "qualities,"  leaving  as  the  testimony  of 
our  instinctive  constitution  merely  the  belief  in  an  external 
something  that  produces  the  sensation;  to  be  the  object  of 
perception  is  nothing  more  than  to  be  the  foreign  cause  or  oc- 


1 6  English  and  American  Philosophy 

casion  on  which  this  state  of  mind  directly  or  indirectly  arises. 
The  situation  which  Reid  had  ascribed  to  secondary  qualities  is 
thus  extended  to  all;  even  what  we  regard  as  extended  or  re- 
sisting IS  known  to  us  only  by  the  feelings  occasioned  in  our 
minds.  And  in  this  way  our  perception  of  matter  can  be  ex- 
plained without  calling  in  any  special  ''faculty";  it  involves 
only  a  complex  association  of  ideas,  including  in  particular  the 
muscular  feeling  of  resistance, — one  of  Brown's  chief  titles  to 
fame  is  his  distinction  of  muscular  feelings  from  those  of 
touch, — which  serve  to  suggest  to  the  mind  the  notion  of  a 
cause  not  in  the  mind  itself.  Without  this  last  addition,  we 
should  have  passed  from  Scottish  realism  to  associationism ; 
and  even  with  it  we  evidently  have  taken  only  a  short  step  in 
the  direction  of  Reid's  desire  to  validate  objective  knowledge. 
The  actual  qualitative  knowledge  we  can  hope  to  get  is  only 
of  the  successive  states  or  affections  of  the  mind;  apart  from 
this  we  are  left  at  best  with  "a  something  we  know  not  what," 
as  a  permanent  source  of  sensation.  And  even  this  seems 
jeopardized  on  a  closer  scrutiny.  Not  only  does  Brown  insist 
that  the  sensations  which  mediate  knowledge  are  subjective, 
and  wholly  unlike  anything  that  is  in  the  object  itself;  the  same 
is,  if  anything,  even  more  clearly  true  of  relations,  which  are 
feelings  that  arise  in  the  mind,  not  from  an  external  source,  but 
from  its  own  independent  constitution.  It  follows  that  time, 
then,  which  is  one  of  the  relations,  has  no  objective  reality.^ 
But  in  that  case  the  notion  of  cause  as  well,  which  involves 
temporal  succession,  is  purely  mental;  and  it  is  natural  to  ask 
how  any  use  of  it  can  serve  our  purpose. 

§  2.  Hamilton.     Mansd.     The  Edinburgh  Reviewers 

I.    On  the  whole,  the  most  important  name  connected  with 
the  movement  started  by  Reid  is  that  of  Sir  William  Hamilton, 
Professor  of  Logic  and  Metaphysics  at  Edinburgh  from  1836 
^Philosophy  of  the  Human  Mind,  Lectures  V,  XLI. 


Sir  William  Hamilton  17 

till  his  death  in  1856.  Hamilton  won  an  enormous  repu- 
tation on  a  comparatively  slender  basis  of  published  writing, — 
in  particular,  a  number  of  articles  contributed  to  the  Edinburgh 
Review, — ^partly  through  the  influence  which  his  vigorous  per- 
sonality, aided  by  a  portentous  array  of  philosophical  learning, 
made  upon  the  academic  world,  but  also  through  a  real  gift  for 
abstract  metaphysical  speculation  at  a  time  when  metaphysics 
in  Great  Britain  seemed  on  the  point  of  becoming  extinct. 
Whether  his  talents  were  really  of  great  service  to  the  perma- 
nent cause  of  philosophy  is  another  question.  About  his  learn- 
ing there  is  no  dispute,  though  it  was  of  a  sort  held  in  more 
esteem  in  his  own  day  than  at  the  present  time.  Hamilton  is 
most  successful  in  combing  philosophical  literature  for  semi- 
linguistic  data;  and  all  philosophy  tends  for  him  to  take  the 
measure  of  the  little  group  of  problems  and  concepts  agitated 
by  the  Scottish  school.  The  actual  influence  of  his  arduous 
historical  labor,  in  the  absence  of  any  adequate  embodiment, 
rests  mainly  on  the  fact  that  he  had  read  widely  in  the  new 
German  philosophy,  though  he  never  quite  got  the  clue  to  it; 
and  his  reputation  did  something  to  make  such  knowledge  re- 
spectable. On  the  side  of  his  own  more  original  speculations, 
it  is  again  very  doubtful  whether  he  has  contributed  anything 
of  lasting  value  to  the  history  of  thought;  and  there  is  even 
some  reason  to  suspect  that,  all  things  considered,  his  influ- 
ence tended  to  encourage  a  sort  of  philosophizing  that  does  the 
name  of  metaphysics  no  particular  good.  Hamilton's  mind 
combines  great  subtlety  with  a  defective  sense  for  reality,  and 
a  lack  even  of  first-rate  logical  clearheadedness;  meanwhile  he 
has  built  his  philosophy  about  two  terms — relativity,  and  con- 
sciousness— both  of  more  than  average  ambiguity,  and  both 
certain  to  breed  trouble  unless  one  is  prepared  to  exercise  the 
most  careful  discrimination. 

2.  The  phrase  "relativity  of  knowledge'^  is  one  which  the 
instructed  reader  will  approach  with  a  sinking  of  the  heart,  for 
he  knows  that  in  it  lie  all  sorts  of  possibilities  for  obscure  and 


1 8  English  and  American  Philosophy 

unprofitable  logomachy.  In  its  multiplicity  of  meanings  Ham- 
ilton himself  seems  to  revel ;  and  this  makes  it  difficult  to  state 
his  position  without  a  certain  amount  of  indirection.  The 
doctrine  that  knowledge  is  relative  goes  back  to  Reid  and  his 
successors,  where  it  has  on  the  whole  a  pretty  definite  meaning; 
and  with  this  meaning  Hamilton  also  takes  his  start.  It  in- 
tends to  assert,  namely,  that  we  can  know  only  the  qualities  or 
modifications  or  modes  of  substance,  and  not  substance  itself. 
This,  so  long  as  we  hold  to  the  traditional  notion  of  substance, 
is  indeed  self-evident.  If  substance  is  that  in  which  qualities 
inhere,  it  is  not  itself  a  quality;  and  since  anything  that  is  held 
as  a  specific  character  before  the  mind  is  found  to  be  a  quality 
or  a  relation,  substance  as  distinct  from  quality  cannot  be 
thought  in  terms  of  definite  characteristics.  It  is  merely  the 
unknown  answer  to  a  logical  demand. 

3.  But  now  a  second  meaning  also  appears  in  the  earlier 
philosophers,  though  it  comes  into  prominence  only  in  Hamil- 
ton's hands.  This  is  to  the  effect  that  in  becoming  known 
through  its  qualities,  an  object  is  always  relative  to  our  human 
faculties.  However,  this  is  open  to  more  than  one  interpreta- 
tion. The  statement  may  have,  and  at  times  evidently  does 
have,  a  purely  verbal  significance,  from  which  no  consequences 
flow  that  have  the  slightest  philosophical  importance.  It  tells 
us,  in  other  words,  that  we  cannot  know  anything  unless  we 
have  the  power  to  know  it,  and  that  there  may  be  plenty  of 
things  in  the  world  which  we  do  not  know  through  lack  of  the 
appropriate  organ,  as  we  should  never  suspect  the  existence  of 
color  were  we  bom  without  eyes.  But  about  the  validity  of  the 
knowledge  we  do  happen  to  possess  this  does  not  decide  one 
way  or  the  other;  and  it  is  the  question  of  validity  which  in- 
terests the  philosopher. 

There  is  however  one  particular  fact  in  this  connection  which 
may  be  thought  to  bear  upon  the  question  of  validity,  and  to 
lend  itself  to  that  apparent  desire  to  discredit  knowledge  which 
the  claim  that  knowledge  is  only  relative  seems  to  reveal.    This 


Sir  William  Hamilton  19 

is  the  fact  that  there  cooperate  in  sense  perception  two  things, 
the  object  and  the  sense  organ,  with  in  some  cases  also  a  third 
thing,  the  intervening  medium,  to  complicate  the  process.  It  is 
a  natural  conclusion  to  draw  from  this,  that  since  the  activity 
of  the  object  is  modified  both  by  the  fact  that  it  has  to  act 
through  a  transmitting  medium,  and  by  the  peculiarities  of  the 
organic  structure,  the  result  cannot  be  equivalent  to  the  origi- 
nating cause;  if  object  and  organism  have  to  combine  in  pro- 
ducing perception,  perception  cannot  truly  represent  the  object 
alone. 

It  is  not  easy  to  decide  in  Hamilton's  case  just  how  seriously 
we  ought  to  take  this  conclusion.  Of  course  the  physical  effect 
of  the  interaction  of  two  things  is  not  identical  with  either  of 
them  by  itself;  but  we  are  not  supposed  to  be  dealing  here  with 
physiology.  On  the  other  hand  it  is  a  plain  fact  that  eccen- 
tricities of  the  organism  sometimes  interfere  to  falsify  the  evi- 
dence we  seem  to  get  from  the  senses,  as  is  shown  by  the  way 
in  which  we  are  constantly  discovering  how  to  make  allowance 
for  organic  conditions.  But  this,  so  far  from  meaning  that 
knowledge  is  essentially  and  necessarily  imperfect,  implies  the 
contrary;  we  can  know  that  a  given  piece  of  knowledge  is  in- 
adequate only  through  the  possession  of  adequate  knowledge  by 
which  to  correct  it.  A  metaphysical  doctrine  of  relativity, 
however,  evidently  intends  to  refer  to  knowledge  intrinsically 
and  always.  We  need  then  a  plain  answer  to  the  question, 
Does  the  cooperation  of  the  senses,  or  the  mind,  in  knowledge, 
bring  it  about  that  the  character  attributed  to  reality  always  is 
different  from  the  character  it  actually  possesses?  or  may  we 
know  characters  as  they  really  are?  The  plain  answer  in 
Hamilton's  case  is  not  forthcoming.  On  the  one  hand  the  im- 
I>ortance  assigned  to  the  doctrine  that  knowledge  is  dependent 
on  the  cooperation  of  different  factors,  strongly  suggests  that 
we  intend  the  former  implication;  otherwise,  again,  relativity 
stands  only  for  the  truism  that  we  cannot  know  unless  we  have 
the  proper  means  of  knowledge.    However  we  are  not  com- 


20  English  and  American  Philosophy 

pelled  to  attribute  this  to  Hamilton.  Logically  his  thesis  that 
the  full  object  presented  to  the  mind  is  something  compounded 
of  the  external  object,  the  external  medium,  and  the  living 
organ  of  sense  in  their  mutual  relation,^  may  mean,  not  that 
each  single  element  in  knowledge  is  due  to  the  combination  of 
causes,  but  that  there  are  different  elements  some  of  which  are 
due  to  one  factor  and  some  to  another;  in  which  case  it  is  our 
business  to  distinguish  them,  and  assign  them  each  to  its  proper 
source.  If  such  is  the  meaning,  any  thoroughgoing  doctrine  of 
relativity  as  a  doctrine  of  necessary  falsification  breaks  down; 
in  the  end,  though  not  immediately,  we  can  know  qualities  that 
belong  to  reality  itself,  since  a  critical  analysis  can  eliminate 
the  subjective  elements,  and  leave  the  objective  in  their  purity. 
This  is  the  way  in  which  Hamilton  himself  apparently  intended 
to  have  us  understand  him;  and  indeed  it  would  seem  that  it 
rrncst  be  his  interpretation  when  we  turn  to  another  cardinal 
point  in  his  philosophy.  For  it  is  the  whole  contention  of  his 
perceptual  realism,  in  opposition  to  Brown,  that  in  perception 
we  have  immediate  knowledge  of  external  reality  itself,  sup- 
posedly in  its  true  nature. 

So  far,  then,  we  cannot  be  certain  that  we  have  got  beyond 
the  doctrine  that  we  know  only  the  qualities  of  things  and  not 
their  underlying  substance;  for  no  decisive  reason  has  been 
given  why  we  should  not  know  these  qualities  as  they  really 
are.  And  as  Hamilton's  realism  implies  that  we  do  know  them 
as  they  are  in  certain  cases,  his  realism  and  his  relativity — ^if 
relativity  is  to  be  supposed  to  cast  some  discredit  on  our  knowl- 
edge— are  not  in  entire  harmony.  But  now  there  are  two 
further  refinements  in  the  meaning  of  relativity  which  carry 
us  nearer  to  Hamilton's  real  interests,  and  which  divide  the 
responsibility  between  them  for  what  may  seem  on  the  surface 
at  least  its  inconsistent  demands;  the  first  becomes  a  tool  for 
upholding  the  reality  of  our  knowledge  of  the  world  of  sense 
perception,  and  the  second  justifies  that  conviction  of  the 

^Metaphysics,  Vol.  I,  pp.  146  f.  (Edin.  and  Lond.,  1859). 


Sir  William  Hamilton  21 

"imbecility"  of  the  human  mind  which  relativity  certainly  is  in- 
tended to  suggest. 

4.  The  doctrine  that  sense  qualities  are  the  outcome  of  an 
interaction  between  two  causal  agents  tended,  as  we  saw,  to 
throw  doubt  on  their  claim  to  reach  reality.  But  now  there  is 
a  variant  conception  here.  When  the  claim  that  in  perception 
we  know  matter  directly  is  uppermost,  relativity  gets  a  further 
meaning.  It  stands,  that  is,  as  a  description  of  the  internal 
content  of  the  perceiving  experience  itself,  and  no  longer  as  a 
statement  of  the  relationship  between  the  human  faculties  and 
a  cause  beyond  experience.  In  perception,  namely,  Hamilton 
thinks  that  matter  is  always  recognized  as  distinguished  from 
the  self  that  perceives  it,  and  that  both  alike — self  and  not- 
self — are  present,  as  related,  directly  to  consciousness,  or 
within  consciousness.^  And  in  this  way  relativity  is  made,  not 
to  throw  doubt  upon,  but  to  validate,  the  claim  to  real  knowl- 
edge. To  say,  with  the  idealists  or  the  sceptics,  that  we  per- 
ceive only  modifications  of  our  own  minds,  is  a  falsification  of 
the  fact.  Perception  is  always  of  something  distinguished,  in 
the  very  act  of  perceiving,  from  any  possible  modification  of 
the  self;  and  accordingly  if  we  trust  consciousness  we  have  the 
right  to  claim  an  immediate,  though  a  relative,  knowledge  of 
the  external  world,  possessing  the  same  certainty  that  everyone 
recognizes  as  attaching  to  the  testimony  of  consciousness  to  the 
subjective  element. 

5.  The  doctrine  of  perceptual  realism  which  here  enters  on 
the  scene  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  state  satisfactorily.  It  may 
|>erhai>s  best  be  approached  by  contrasting  it  with  Reid's 
realism.  The  strong  point  in  Reid's  contention  is  his  un- 
qualified adherence  to  the  common-sense  judgment  that  some- 
how our  knowledge  fastens  on  the  thing  itself,  and  not  on  a 
mere  subjective  copy  of  it;  in  perception,  and  in  thought  gen- 
erally, we  are  aware  of  only  one  object,  and  that  the  real  one. 
But  this  so  far  is  a  fact  simply,  which  does  not  supply  its  own 

^Ibid.,  I,  p.  288;  Discussions,  pp.  56  f.,  60  (N.  Y.,  1858). 


22         English  and  'American  Philosophy 

interpretation;  and  it  might  not  be  inconsistent  with  a  mediat-  ^ 
ist  view  of  knowledge  if  this  were  qualified  with  sufficient  care. 
Even  if  objects  are  known  only  through  the  medium  of  sen- 
sations or  ideas,  there  still  might  be  a  way  to  conceive  of  this 
without  having  to  deny  that  the  original  knowledge-reference  is 
directed  to  the  object,  and  not  to  the  mental  medium.  Ham- 
ilton however  is  not  so  much  concerned  with  the  common- 
sense  conviction,  as  with  a  certain  metaphysical  interpretation 
which  he  gives  to  it — the  interpretation  that,  to  be  known 
realistically,  the  object  must  be  actually  present  within  con- 
sciousness, and  identified  as  an  existent  with  the  experienced 
quality.  This  metaphysical  notion  of  immediacy  Hamilton 
makes  the  essence  of  Reid's  doctrine,  and  he  sets  out  to  justify 
it  against  Brown,  who,  he  rightly  saw,  had  given  up  realism  in 
this  peculiar  sense. 

But  in  doing  this  he  develops  consequences  which,  if  Reid's 
intention  was  to  justify  common-sense  belief,  have  surprisingly 
little  in  common  with  the  spirit  of  his  master.  In  the  first 
place,  he  is  led  to  falsify  entirely  the  testimony  of  experience 
when  he  comes  to  knowledge  in  the  form  of  thought  and  mem- 
ory, and  to  adopt  the  very  position  which  the  Scottish  phi- 
losophy supposed  itself  to  have  refuted.  Reid  had  said,  with 
quite  obvious  truth,  that  when  I  remember  an  object  previously 
seen,  I  remember  the  object  itself,  and  not  a  present  image  of 
it;  and  this  claim  is  not  affected  by  any  doubt  that  may  attach 
to  his  further  denial  of  the  existence  of  an  image  altogether. 
Hamilton  sees  that  there  is  such  a  thing  psychologically  as  an 
image,  which  alone  is  immediately  present.  But  because  of 
his  dogma  that  knowledge  can  be  immediate  only  in  case  its 
object  is  literally  there  and  in  contact  with  the  knower,  he  is 
forced  to  hold  that  we  cannot  in  memory  know  the  past  object, 
since  this  is  no  longer  present;  what  I  know  is  my  present 
memory-image,  and  I  infer  the  real  object  from  this.  In 
memory,  the  position  of  Reid  has  thus  been  abandoned  com- 
pletely, and  a  retup  made  to  the  representative  theory. 


Sir  William  Hamilton  23 

It  is  only  in  sense  perception,  accordingly,  that  the  possi- 
bility of  immediate  knowledge  remains.  But  even  here  Ham- 
ilton is  compelled,  in  the  interests  of  his  metaphysical  thesis,  to 
depart  from  everyday  belief  almost  as  widely  as  idealism  had 
done.  Since  the  object,  to  be  known  immediately,  has  to  be 
identically  present,  any  removal  of  the  object  in  space  or  time 
is  sufficient  to  prevent  such  knowledge.  One  difficulty  here 
which  would  appeal  to  the  modern  psychologist — the  difficulty 
that  perception  occurs  an  appreciable  time  interval  after  the 
stimulus  affects  the  sense  organ — Hamilton  gets  round  by 
denying  the  fact;  the  difficulty  in  terms  of  space  he  meets  by 
recasting  our  naive  belief.  Reid  had  said,  I  do  not  see  a  sen- 
sation of  the  sun,  but  the  real  sun.  No,  says  Hamilton,  this  is 
ridiculous — that  is,  logically  inconsistent  with  my  definition  of 
immediacy — since  the  real  sun  is  separated  from  us  by  millions 
of  miles;  what  I  really  see  is  the  light  rays  in  contact  with  the 
retina.  But  Hamilton  is  not  able  even  to  stop  here;  and  in 
the  Notes  on  Reid,  which  represent  his  final  belief,  it  appears 
that  it  is  after  all  not  the  light  rays  that  we  know  directly,  but, 
instead,  certain  qualities  of  the  organism  itself.  To  justify  the 
light  ray  theory,  Hamilton  had  been  forced  to  extend  the  mind 
beyond  the  brain  to  the  surfaces  of  the  body,  in  order  to  make 
it  possible  for  external  things  to  get  in  contact  with  it.  But 
even  contact  is  not  sufficient,  since  the  colliding  object  still  lies 
beyond  the  mind;  to  overcome  the  separation  we  have  to  get 
reality  actually  inside  the  body.  Accordingly  it  becomes  nec- 
essary to  make  a  distinction.  Since  the  external  reality  itself 
still  remains  outside,  and  so  beyond  consciousness,  we  are  com- 
pelled to  separate  in  our  explanation  extra-bodily  existence,  and 
intra-organic  quality.  For  the  first  of  these,  Hamilton  now 
resorts  to  what  is  essentially  Brown's  doctrine;  the  existence 
of  external  things  is  not  strictly  an  immediate  fact  of  con- 
sciousness, but  is  due  to  an  exp>erience  of  resisted  movement 
through  which  we  acquire  the  belief  in  an  indepyendent  counter- 
force — a  belief  that  may  conceivably  be  mistaken,  even  though 


24         English  and  American  Philosophy 

we  find  it  practically  impossible  to  doubt  it.  All  that  is  left 
standing  of  immediate  realism  is,  accordingly,  the  presence 
within  consciousness  of  certain  real  physical  qualities  which 
are  known  immediately  as  qualities  of  the  organism  itself,  but 
which,  since  the  organism  is  of  a  piece  with  the  rest  of  the 
world,  we  are  justified  in  using  to  interpret  also  the  nature  of 
that  outside  force  revealed  by  the  feeling  of  resistance.  To 
establish  this  first  possibility  it  only  remains  to  break  down 
the  hard  and  fast  separation  between  matter  and  sensitivity,  so 
that  a  sensation  can  at  the  same  time  be  held  to  be  an  affection 
of  the  physical  organism  itself;  sensations,  that  is,  are  to  be 
regarded  as  belonging  neither  to  the  body  alone,  nor  to  the 
mind  alone,  but  to  the  composite  of  which  each  is  a  constituent. 
Here  Hamilton  leaves  much  to  be  desired  in  the  way  of  clear- 
ness; but  his  view  seems  to  be  that  the  real  or  primary  quali- 
ties of  matter  actually  get  inside  consciousness  in  the  shape  of 
relationships  of  "outness"  immediately  observable  among  sec- 
ondary sensational  qualities,  and  recognized  as  a  not-self  over 
against  the  self.^ 

6.  It  is  sufficiently  apparent  how  far  in  such  a  doctrine  we 
have  gone  from  Reid's  demand  that  we  accept  the  practical 
truth  of  our  common-sense  beliefs,  as  against  unwarranted 
theoretical  constructions.  And  it  is  not  clear  even  that  we  have 
saved  the  dogma  in  the  interest  of  which  the  theory  is  devised. 
This  dogma  is,  that  a  knowledge  of  the  external  world  is 
guaranteed  by  Consciousness,  and  that  Consciousness  is  never 
by  any  possibility  open  to  doubt.  Now  this  introduction  of 
consciousness  contributes  very  sensibly  to  the  obscurities  of 
Hamilton's  position,  though  it  also  serves  to  call  attention  to 
their  source.  By  consciousness,  Reid  had  been  accustomed  to 
mean  the  power,  or  faculty,  through  which  we  become  aware  of 
the  operations  of  the  mind ;  it  corresponds  substantially  to  the 
power  of  "introspection,"  conceived  however  as  an  immediate 
rather  than  a  reflective  act.  Brown  had  abandoned  this  along 
^Reid,  Note  D.* 


Sir  William  Hamilton  25 

with  other  faculties,  and  had  used  the  term  of  the  series  of 
feelings  themselves,  the  stream  of  "conscious  states."  In  a 
general  way  Hamilton  goes  back  to  Reid's  conception,  in  that 
consciousness  stands  for  an  immediate  and  indubitable  knowl- 
edge of  the  present  content  of  our  minds.  But  he  objects 
to  Reid's  limitation  of  consciousness  to  a  special  faculty  of 
self  knowledge,  while  turning  over  our  acquaintance  with 
matter  to  something  called  Perception;  if  we  know  the  ego 
and  the  non-ego  through  separate  faculties,  of  what  sort, 
he  asks,  is  the  act  that  distinguishes  and  relates  the  two?  And 
he  meets  the  difficulty  by  his  own  theory  that  "consciousness" 
reveals  not  the  self  alone,  but  always  self  and  not-self  in  rela- 
tion. Hamilton's  motive  here  is  clear  enough;  he  wants  to  say 
that  we  are  conscious  of  the  object,  because  only  immediate 
presence  to  consciousness  supplies  indubitable  "knowledge,"  in 
distinction  from  possibly  mistaken  "belief."  But  in  spite  of 
all  his  efforts  his  theory  fails  after  all  to  give  him  this;  and 
his  discussion  turns  into  an  effort  to  camouflage  the  fact  with- 
out qualifying  his  original  claims.  As  the  analysis  of  sense  per- 
ception has  compelled  him  to  admit,  no  belief  in  objects  outside 
the  organism  possesses  strict  necessity,  though  such  objects  are 
essential  to  what  we  mean  by  an  external  world;  what  then 
does  the  authority  of  "consciousness"  amount  to  in  such  a  case? 
Not,  he  confesses,  to  the  authorization  of  a  belief  in  matter, 
but  to  the  recognition  that  matter  is  what  men  actually  do  be- 
lieve in;  all  that  consciousness  testifies  to  is  the  nature  of  our 
belief,  self-evident  as  a  matter  of  introspective  analysis,  but 
furnishing  no  criterion. of  the  belief's  validity.  For  the  last  we 
have  to  fall  back,  as  Reid  and  Brown  had  done,  merely  on  the 
impossibility  of  giving  up  the  belief  without  practical  bank- 
ruptcy, since  if  consciousness  is  proved  false  in  one  point, 
its  whole  authority  is  undermined.^  But  in  this  case  belief  is 
sufficient,  and  the  peculiar  virtue  supposed  to  reside  in 
Hamilton's  theory  of  consciousness  disappears. 

^Reid,  Note  A,  II,  IV;  Metaphysics,  I,  pp.  271  ff. 


26         English  and  American  Philosophy 

Meanwhile  it  should  be  noticed  that  the  whole  doctrine  of 
the  relativity  of  knowledge  in  the  sense  we  are  now  considering 
rests  on  a  very  doubtful  basis.  It  has  been  assumed  as  some- 
thing which  nobody  can  seriously  question,  that  we  are  con- 
scious, in  every  act  of  knowledge,  of  self  and  not-self  as  two 
related  factors,  and  that  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  know  without 
at  the  same  time  knowing  that  we  know.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
we  are  conscious  of  nothing  of  the  sort.  When  I  look  at  an 
object,  there  is  no  need  whatever  that  the  content  of  knowl- 
edge should  at  the  same  time  include  a  reference  to  myself; 
unless  I  am  in  a  sophisticated  mood,  the  probability  is  that  it 
will  not  include  this.  Hamilton  is  using  here  the  evidence, 
not  of  perception,  but  of  a  later  reflective  judgment.  Naturally 
when  I  think  about  my  perception  of  an  object,  subject  and 
object  are  present  in  my  thought;  I  cannot  think  of  a  thing  as 
known  without  a  reference  to  the  correlative  term  "knower." 
But  there  is  no  reason  why  I  should  not  think  of  things  without 
thinking  of  them  as  known. 

7.  We  may,  then,  in  estimating  the  fifth  and  last  sense  of 
relativity,  turn  from  Hamilton's  confused  doctrine  of  conscious- 
ness, to  the  plain  meaning  which  he  shares  with  Reid.  Here 
the  authority  of  consciousness  means  only  the  authority  of 
common  sense,  or  of  those  fundamental  beliefs  which  depend 
upon  nature  or  instinct  rather  than  upon  reason  or  speculative 
theory.  And  it  is  in  the  light  of  this  that  we  may  understand 
that  notion  of  relativity  on  which  Hamilton's  agnosticism 
chiefly  rests.  For  this  agnosticism  is  not  as  bad  as  it  sounds. 
It  is  primarily  concerned  not  with  perception,  nor  with  the 
validity  of  primitive  beliefs,  but  with  reason;  and  the  relativity 
of  knowledge  is  designed  to  vindicate  perception  and  common 
sense  in  opposition  to  the  misleading  deliverances  of  the  specu- 
lative faculty.  It  is  not,  then,  that  Hamilton  distrusts  in  a 
thoroughgoing  way  the  soundness  of  the  human  mind.  What 
he  distrusts  is  only  a  one-sided  reliance  on  logic  and  ratioci- 
nation.   And  it  is  to  this  that  he  opposes  his  grand  principle — 


Sir  William  Hamilton  27 

"the  facts  of  consciousness,  the  whole  facts,  and  nothing  but  the 
facts."  Here  the  second  phrase  stands  for  the  need  of  taking 
into  account  the  moral  and  religious  side  of  human  nature  as 
well  as  the  intellect;  the  third  stands  for  the  need  of  keeping 
close  to  the  primitive  and  intuitive  deliverances  of  the  mind, — 
incomprehensible  indeed,  but  only  in  the  sense  that,  as  they  are 
the  basis  of  all  explanation,  there  is  nothing  more  ultimate  in 
terms  of  which  to  explain  them, — and  of  defending  these 
against  presumptuous  efforts  to  put  in  their  place  man-made 
theories  and  hypotheses. 

But  Hamilton,  as  usual,  goes  beyond  the  common-sense  at- 
titude of  his  predecessors,  and  complicates  the  matter  by  meta- 
physical subtleties.  And  in  particular  he  turns  to  a  sort  of 
consideration  which  always  has  a  peculiar  fascination  for  the 
true  metaphysician.  The  main  proof  of  the  "imbecility"  of  the 
speculative  mind  Hamilton  finds  in  the  antinomies  of  reason 
— in  the  fact,  namely,  that  when  we  leave  the  realm  of  homely 
matters  of  experience,  and  aim  at  a  knowledge  of  the  Infinite 
and  the  Absolute,  we  find  ourselves  driven  by  an  equal  neces- 
sity of  reason  to  contradictory  conclusions.  And  what  we  are 
to  deduce  from  this  is,  that  the  Creator  did  not  intend  the  mind 
to  roam  in  these  exalted  spheres.  This  does  not  mean,  once 
more,  an  entire  distrust  of  human  powers.  The  very  argu- 
ment which  proves  the  incompetence  of  the  reason  depends  for 
its  force  on  our  confidence  in  the  veracity  of  the  mind's  ulti- 
mate and  unreasoned  intuitions.  I  find  myself,  for  example, 
unable  to  conceive  space  as  infinitely  extended;  and  on  the 
other  hand  it  is  equally  impossible  for  me  to  conceive  it  as 
finite  and  limited,  with  no  other  space  beyond.  But  now  by  a 
law  of  thought  I  am  forced  to  believe  that  one  of  the  con- 
tradictory alternatives  is  true,  even  though  I  am  utterly  at  a 
loss  to  conceive  how  it  can  be  true.  All  that  we  can  conceive — 
and  this  is  the  final  account  of  relativity — is  a  mean  between 
two  contradictory  extremes,  both  of  which  are  inconceivable, 
but  of  which,  as  mutually  repugnant,  both  cannot  be  false.  "A 


28         English  and  American  Philosophy 

learned  ignorance  is  thus  the  end  of  philosophy,  as  it  is  the 
beginning  of  theology."  And  here  there  comes  to  light  the 
animus  that  lies  back  of  Hamilton's  agnosticism.  He  would 
destroy  reason  that  he  may  leave  room  for  faith,  would  de- 
throne the  claims  of  a  "presumptuous  knowledge"  in  order 
that  the  rest  of  man's  nature  may  get  its  rights. 

In  this  final  doctrine  of  Hamilton's  we  complete  the  circle, 
and  get  into  connection  again  with  the  first  sense  of  relativity. 
For  the  Unconditioned  which  the  human  mind  is  incompetent 
to  know  is  the  bare  concept  of  substance  apart  from  its  qual- 
ities. And  so  considered,  it  is  a  good  deal  a  matter  of  choice 
whether  we  shall  regard  Hamilton's  agnosticism  as  immaterial, 
or  as  self-defeating.  If  we  suppose,  as  on  the  whole  the  doc- 
trine of  perception  supposes,  that  our  definite  perceptual  knowl- 
edge is  a  knowledge  of  characters  that  really  belong  to  the 
world,  it  is  knowledge  that  seemingly  ought  to  be  good  enough 
for  anybody.  If  on  the  other  hand,  as  in  his  metaphysical 
moods  Hamilton  constantly  implies,  such  relative  knowledge  is 
illusory  and  unreal,  if  the  mere  fact  that  what  we  know  is 
something  in  particular  debars  it  from  being  knowledge,  and 
true  reality  is  the  entire  absence  of  distinctions,^  it  would  seem 
that  the  very  effort  to  think  is  suicidal,  and  every  system  alike 
goes  down  in  the  general  crash.  Hamilton's  philosophy  would 
then  be  only  an  attempt  to  deduce  the  theoretical  consequences 
of  a  certain  particular  and  quite  arbitrary  definition  of  the  Ab- 
solute, as  a  unity  apart  from  all  multiplicity  and  all  specific 
inner  character  in  terms  of  interrelated  content;  in  which  case 
it  need  be  no  great  cause  for  surprise  if  the  attempt  ends  in 
self-contradiction.  Hamilton's  practical  intention  however  is 
much  more  modest  and  plausible;  what  really  moves  him  is  the 
conviction  that  we  are  not  forced  of  necessity  to  abandon  be- 
liefs because  we  cannot  fully  understand  them  and  set  forth 
their  "why"  and  "how."  But  he  weakens  his  case  by  the 
peculiar  limitation  which  he  gives  to  "faith.'^    Reid  also  in  a 

^Discussions,  pp.  26,  39  f. 


Sir  William  Hamilton  29 

sense  falls  back  upon  faith;  but  the  principles  of  common 
sense  which  must  be  accepted  in  the  end  on  trust  are  not  pre- 
vented thereby  from  being  essentially  intelligible,  even  though 
they  cannot  be  deduced  from  anything  more  ultimate.  Hamil- 
ton, on  the  contrary,  tends  to  regard  as  the  proper  object  of 
faith  that  which  in  its  nature  is  inconceivable.  But  faith  in 
something  which,  if  accepted,  makes  the  world  rational,  is  one 
thing;  faith  in  what  we  are  incapable  of  bringing  before  the 
mind  in  terms  of  thought  is  quite  another.  To  assert,  for 
example,  that  we  believe  in  the  personality  of  God,  while  at 
the  same  time  we  take  the  ground  that  this  must  be  something 
totally  different  from  what  human  beings  understand  by  per- 
sonality, is  merely  to  utter  sounds  without  sense. 

8.  It  is  in  connection  with  Hamilton's  justification  of  re- 
ligious faith  that  we  find  the  chief  ground  for  the  charge  made 
by  the  rival  school  of  the  Utilitarians  against  the  intuitionists 
generally,  that  with  them  philosophy  is  used  to  coimtenance  the 
irrational,  and  serve  as  a  bulwark  against  reform  in  Church 
and  State.  The  possibility  exists;  and  if  reactionaries  were 
much  given  to  philosophy  we  might  expect  to  find  them  sym- 
pathetic with  intuitionist  doctrines.  It  does  not  seem  to  be 
the  case  however  that  any  serious  charge  of  obscurantism  can 
be  brought  against  the  more  eminent  representatives  of  com- 
mon sense.  Dugald  Stewart  was  indeed  a  liberal  of  a  fairly 
engaging  sort,  who  in  his  class  room  disseminated  ideas  of 
sweetness  and  light  which  had  no  inconsiderable  effect  on  the 
new  generation;  though  it  is  also  true  that  he  took  care  to 
keep  to  terms  too  general  to  excite  much  chance  of  odium,  and 
could  recommend  himself  to  a  noble  correspondent  on  the 
ground  that,  while  he  had  at  one  time  expressed  himself  warmly 
about  the  slave  trade — the  only  question  touching  political 
issues  on  which  he  had  ever  presumed  to  influence  his  pupils — 
he  had  at  once  withdrawn  these  expressions  when  the  question 
came  to  be  a  matter  of  general  discussion.  To  be  sure,  all 
the  common-sense  philosophers  were  friends  of  religion,  and 


30         English  and  American  Philosophy 

argued  in  its  favor;  but  this  by  itself  is  hardly  to  be  held 
against  them.  It  is  only  in  one  disciple  of  Hamilton — Dean 
Mansel — that  we  come  across  a  development  which  seems  to 
offer  some  justification  for  the  dislike  and  suspicion  of  the 
radicals. 

What  Mansel  sets  out  to  do  is  to  defend  the  Christian  re- 
ligion as  an  authoritative  and  supernatural  revelation,  by 
showing  the  inadequacy  of  any  philosophy  whose  "final  test 
of  truth  is  placed  in  the  direct  assent  of  the  human  conscious- 
ness, whether  in  the  form  of  logical  deduction,  or  moral  judg- 
ment, or  religious  intuition."  And  the  particular  method  he 
adopts  is  one  he  had  learned  from  Hamilton's  philosophy  of 
relativity,  whose  puzzles  about  the  absolute  and  the  infinite 
he  refines  upon  with  much  ingenuity;  though  our  confidence 
in  his  metaphysical  grasp  is  not  likely  to  be  strengthened  when 
we  find  him  implying  that  the  necessary  existence  of  an  ab- 
solute apart  from  relations  is  convertible  with  the  necessity 
that  God  should  have  existed  alone  prior  to  the  creation  of 
the  world.  The  method  consists  in  an  attempt  to  bar  the  "in- 
trusion of  the  human  intellect  into  sacred  things,"  by  turning 
criticism  on  the  mind  itself,  and  making  it  appear  that  reason 
suffers  from  a  fundamental  defect  which  renders  it  an  insuffi- 
cient test  of  truth.  The  difficulties  which  the  rationalists  pro- 
fess to  discover  in  theology  are  in  fact  inherent  in  the  very  laws 
of  human  thought,  and  must  accompany  any  attempt  at 
speculation,  religious  or  irreligious ;  they  tell  equally  against  all 
belief  and  all  unbelief,  so  that  to  turn  to  reason  is  merely  to  for- 
sake an  incomprehensible  doctrine  which  rests  upon  the  word  of 
God,  for  one  equally  incomprehensible  which  rests  upon  the 
word  of  man.  Why  for  example  should  we  take  offence  at  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  when  it  involves  just  the  problem  of 
the  One  and  the  Many  before  which  philosophy  is  helpless?  or 
why  make  a  difficulty  out  of  God's  performing  miracles,  when 
the  real  difficulty  lies  in  understanding  how  anything  can  act 
at  all? 


Dean  Mansel  31 

What  this  meant  concretely  was  a  reversal  of  the  growing 
tendency  to  humanize  tradition  by  bringing  it  to  the  test  of 
our  best  human  insight,  and  a  return  to  the  old  emphasis  on 
external  proofs.  The  legitimate  object,  says  Mansel,  of  a 
rational  criticism  of  revealed  rehgion  is  not  to  be  found  in 
the  content  of  that  religion,  but  in  its  evidences;  we  must  ab- 
stain from  passing  judgment  on  the  nature  of  the  message,  un- 
til we  have  fairly  examined  the  supernatural  credentials  of 
the  messenger.  There  are  two  obvious  elements  of  risk  in 
such  an  attitude.  It  leaves  religion,  in  the  first  place,  help- 
less in  case  this  fails.  Mansel  considers  that  he  is  safeguard- 
ing Christianity  by  disabling  the  weapons  of  rationalism,  and 
staking  everything  on  the  historical  proof  for  the  miraculous; 
he  does  not  realize  that  this  is  precisely  where  the  opponent 
of  Christianity  is  now  most  content  to  rest  his  case.  And 
the  second  danger  is,  that  the  line  of  defence  which  Mansel 
adopts  may  result  in  a  straining  of  the  alliance  between  re- 
ligion and  the  moral  insight.  In  holding  that  our  human 
morality  is  only  an  imperfect  translation  of  the  divine  nature, 
and  that  therefore  we  cannot  condemn  revelation  simply  be- 
cause it  fails  to  meet  our  moral  tests,  it  is  true  Mansel  does 
not  intend  to  make  these  last  of  no  effect.  On  the  whole, 
morality  represents  the  truest  content  we  can  import  into  our 
conception  of  God.  But  it  is  far  from  infallible;  and  we  are 
not  to  pronounce  too  hastily  therefore  in  view  of  an  appearance 
of  contradiction.  Mansel  has  to  meet  two  main  sorts  of  moral 
objection  to  Christianity.  One  is  supplied  by  Bible  narratives 
which  represent  men  as  called  upon  to  act  by  the  command 
of  God  against  the  dictates  of  ordinary  morality — what  Mansel 
calls  "moral  miracles."  The  other  is  the  attribution  to  God 
himself  of  elements  of  character  out  of  harmony  with  our  nat- 
ural moral  demands.  In  neither  case  is  his  reply  convincing. 
Genuinely  to  conceive  that  the  thing  which  I  reprobate  in 
man  becomes  in  God  worthy  of  love  and  reverence,  is  not,  it 
would  seem,  a  sure  way  of  recommending  religion  to  the  mod- 


^2  English  and  American  Philosophy 

em  world;  and  the  Utilitarians  appear  not  to  have  been  alto- 
gether wrong  when  they  detected  in  it  an  affinity  with  the  ob- 
structive forces  in  government  and  society.  For  the  ground 
on  which,  in  particular,  Mansel  bases  the  probability  of  a  two- 
fold standard,  is  precisely  the  fact  of  authority  or  power  in 
God,  and  the  lack  of  any  presumption,  therefore,  that  the  in- 
finite moral  governor  will  be  bound  by  the  same  rules  as  the 
"finite  moral  servant." 

9.  Something  of  the  same  temper  of  mind  that  in  meta- 
physics led  to  a  reliance  upon  common  sense,  and  in  a  form 
more  justly  open  on  the  whole  to  the  strictures  of  the  radical 
critics,  shows  itself  also  in  the  group  of  Whig  essayists  and 
politicians  whose  literary  activity  centers  about  the  Edinburgh 
Review.  None  of  these  are  of  any  great  importance  for  the 
history  of  ideas;  they  are  clever  and  versatile  rather  than 
original  or  penetrating.  But  collectively  they  illustrate  a 
typical  attitude  which  is  apt  to  be  influential  out  of  proportion 
to  its  intellectual  merits.  The  Whig  temper  is  compounded  of 
a  natural  generosity  of  spirit,  along  with  a  strong  infusion  of 
judicial  caution  passing  over  into  intellectual  timidity.  Francis 
Jeffrey,  in  some  ways  the  most  important  name  here,  is  ob- 
trusively of  this  type.  He  is  a  man  who  moves  at  his  ease  only 
within  the  familiar  field  of  the  middle-class  proprieties.  His 
appeal  is  always  to  the  "sober  and  correct  part  of  mankind"; 
he  prefers  in  conduct  the  "beaten  path  of  morality,"  and  has 
a  vivid  feeling  for  the  risk  attending  any  deviation  from  the 
"large  average  which  is  implied  in  those  moral  preferences  that 
are  universally  prevalent."  In  philosophy  proper  this  temper 
shows  in  his  very  moderate  notion  of  the  powers  of  the  phil- 
osophic intellect;  he  finds  some  good  in  both  the  rival  schools 
of  his  day,  without  taking  either  very  seriously.  This  cautious 
estimation  of  the  powers  of  the  intellect  is  used  by  Jeffrey  as 
a  reason  for  the  temperate  character  of  his  hopes  for  social  re- 
form. The  dreams  of  human  perfectibility,  whose  basis  mostly 
had  been  found  in  the  growth  of  knowledge  and  intelligence, 


Francis  Jeffrey  33 

he  discards  as  "utterly  futile."  History  shows  that  a  growing 
knowledge  makes  men  neither  better  nor  happier;  in  some 
ways  they  are  further  from  the  goal  of  their  desires.  The 
more  intelligence  a  man  develops,  the  more  difficult  it  becomes 
to  find  a  scheme  of  life  to  measure  up  to  his  increase  of  critical 
subtlety,  and  his  loss  of  illusions;  it  is  "knowledge  that  destroys 
enthusiasms."  The  political  issue  is  close  at  hand ;  let  us  make 
the  best  of  what  we  have,  and  not  expect  any  drastic  changes 
for  the  better.  Meanwhile  if  we  are  not  satisfied,  as  good 
Christians  we  can  look  to  a  future  life.  Concretely  Jeffrey's 
political  theory  amounts  to  this:  that  while  a  nation  should 
be  dominated  by  its  "natural  aristocracy,"  there  also  should 
be,  in  the  representative  body,  an  organ  to  afford  a  direct,  safe, 
and  legitimate  way  in  which  public  opinion  may  be  brought 
to  bear  upon  those  in  office.  The  great  source  of  danger  to  the 
modern  state  lies  in  the  extension  of  intelligence  and  power 
without  the  corresponding  growth  of  political  forms  for  making 
this  felt;  and  it  was,  he  thought,  the  special  role  of  the  Whig 
party  to  guide  the  new  democratic  forces  into  safe  channels, 
to  "first  conciliate,  then  restrain  the  people,  save  them  from  the 
leaders  they  are  beginning  to  choose  from  their  own  body, 
and  become  themselves  their  leaders,  by  becoming  their  pa- 
trons, and  their  cordial  though  authoritative  advisers." 

10.  Sydney  Smith  is  in  some  ways  a  more  favorable  exam- 
ple of  the  English  liberal,  though  hardly  so  typical,  since  the 
possession  of  a  sense  of  humor  prevents  him  from  taking  him- 
self always  with  quite  the  proper  degree  of  seriousness.  "I 
have,"  Smith  writes,  "a  passionate  love  for  common  justice  and 
for  common  sense" — a  combination  which  constitutes  the  Whig 
temper  at  its  best.  Common  sense  in  Smith's  case,  under  the  in- 
fluence of  his  somewhat  caustic  wit,  at  times  is  responsible  for 
an  unnecessary  harshness  and  lack  of  sympathy  in  his  judg- 
ments; like  Jeffrey,  he  is  too  ready  to  take  the  opinions  of 
the  average  sensible  Englishman  as  his  standard,  and  to  set 
aside  what  goes  beyond  this  as  "metaphysical  lunacies.'^    So  of 


34  English  and  American  Philosophy 

his  attitude  toward  religious  enthusiasms  that  offended  his  own 
preference  for  a  gentleman's  religion  within  the  bounds  of  good 
taste — Methodism  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  "New- 
mania,"  and  the  growing  cult  of  ritual.  However  in  a  way  it 
might  appear  that  just  this  coolness  of  temper,  and  the  moder- 
ation of  his  demands  on  life,  are  connected  with  his  love  of 
justice;  in  a  world  which  is  a  "sorry  business  at  the  best,"  man's 
inhumanity  to  man  can  least  of  all  be  justified.  A  younger, 
and  in  some  respects  the  most  brilliant  member  of  the  group,  is 
Macaulay.  In  Macaulay  the  latent  dislike  of  principled  rea- 
soning becomes  open  and  aggressive.  "Every  man  who  has 
seen  the  world  knows  that  nothing  is  so  useless  as  a  general 
maxim";  up  to  Bacon's  day  "words,  and  more  words,  and  noth- 
ing but  words,  has  been  all  the  fruit  of  all  the  toil  of  all  the 
most  renowned  sages  of  sixty  generations."  Quibbling  about 
self-interest,  and  motives,  and  objects  of  desire,  and  the  great- 
est happiness  of  the  greatest  number,  he  writes  in  a  well-known 
passage  of  the  Utilitarian  endeavor  to  understand  the  springs 
of  moral  conduct,  is  but  a  "poor  employment  for  a  grown 
man,"  though  it  certainly  "hurts  the  health  less  than  hard  drink- 
ing, and  is  immeasurably  more  humane  than  cock  fighting." 
Equally  sensible,  unambitious,  and  pedestrian  is  his  conception 
of  the  social  end — not  to  aim  at  man's  perfection,  but  to  "make 
imperfect  man  comfortable";  and  a  new  motivation  to  this  is 
worth  all  the  theorizing  in  the  world.  Macaulay  could  see 
no  fault  in  the  Constitution,  but  only  in  its  administration; 
and  accordingly  he  could  work  wholeheartedly  in  the  faith  that 
a  Whig  ministry  was  the  one  chief  instrument  of  the  world's 
salvation. 

II.  Sir  James  Mackintosh  is  the  philosopher  of  the  Edin- 
burgh group,  and  in  him  the  attitude  of  suspicion  toward  a 
strenuous  life  of  the  speculative  intellect  is  displaced  by  a 
considerable  degree  of  philosophical  ardor.  Mackintosh  is  a 
man  of  great  and  showy  gifts — though  he  is  lacking  in  steady 


Sir  James  Mackintosh  35 

application, — who  all  his  life  oscillated  between  the  claims  of 
scholarly  and  academic  ambition,  and  the  attractions  of  the 
greater  world  of  politics  and  society  in  which  he  was  eminently 
fitted  to  shine.  As  might  perhaps  be  expected  from  one  whose 
ideal  of  speculative  competence  is  the  amiable  Cicero,  his 
philosophical  writings  are  more  fluent  than  profound  or  rigor- 
ous. His  chief  claim  to  attention  is  in  the  field  of  ethics.  Here, 
starting  from  the  general  principles  of  experience  and  utility, 
he  attempts  to  turn  the  utility  philosophy  into  a  form  less 
suggestive  of  radical  consequences,  and  more  in  harmony  with 
his  own  expressed  belief  that  morals  have  always  been  sta- 
tionary and  are  likely  to  continue  so,  and  that  a  man  ought 
in  reason  therefore  to  be  governed,  not  by  his  own  opinion 
about  the  tendency  of  actions,  but  by  those  "fixed  and  unal- 
terable rules  which  are  the  joint  result  of  the  impartial  judg- 
ment, the  natural  feelings,  and  the  embodied  experience  of 
mankind."  The  original  source  of  all  conduct  Mackintosh 
finds  in  our  primitive  desires,  ultimately  perhaps  in  a  few 
organic  ones.  But  though  at  the  start  life  may  have  been 
egoistic,  it  has  developed  the  power  to  take  an  immediate 
interest  also  in  things  other  than  the  private  self.  Pleasures 
■ — which  presuppose  already  existing  desires — may  be  trans- 
ferred in  a  great  variety  of  directions  to  the  means  involved 
in  their  attainment,  which  by  association  become  as  stable 
and  indecomposable  objects  of  desire  as  the  original  end  of 
action.  And  in  particular  they  are  transferred  to  the  mental 
dispositions  themselves,  and  the  voluntary  actions  that  flow 
from  these.  It  is  an  essential  of  morality  that  we  should 
have  come  to  care  directly  for  such  habitual  dispositions  and 
not  merely  for  their  consequences,  and  so  to  take  pleasure  in 
the  virtuous  activity  for  its  own  sake;  a  man  who  fights  simply 
because  he  thinks  it  more  hazardous  to  yield  has  not  yet  the 
virtue  of  courage.  It  is  the  interwoven  mass  of  such  disposi- 
tions^and  will-acts,  become  an  end  in  itself,  that  constitutes 


36  English  and  American  Philosophy 

conscience,  the  pleasures  of  a  good  conscience  thus  tending  to 
supersede  the  useful  consequences  from  which  this  pleasure 
originally  was  borrowed. 

In  this  way  Mackintosh  would  reconcile  the  claims  of  utility 
and  of  intuitionalism,  by  separating  the  questions  to  which 
respectively  they  supply  an  answer.  Ethics  is  concerned  with 
two  problems — the  nature  of  the  distinction  between  right  and 
wrong,  and  the  nature  of  the  feelings  with  which  right  and 
wrong  are  contemplated.  The  foundation  and  ultimate  cri- 
terion of  moral  rules  are  indeed  to  be  found  in  utility,  which 
thus  provides  a  support  to  Butler's  doctrine  of  the  suprem- 
acy of  conscience;  but  utility  is  not  what  the  mind,  formed 
by  past  experience  and  association,  commonly  holds  before 
itself  consciously  as  its  immediate  standard  and  its  motive. 
Men  are  so  constituted  as  instantaneously  to  approve  certain 
actions  without  any  reference  to  their  consequences;  though 
reason  may  nevertheless  discover  that  a  tendency  to  produce 
general  happiness  is  the  essential  characteristic  of  these  actions. 
Of  Mackintosh's  political  philosophy,  only  a  word  needs  to  be 
added;  on  the  whole  it  is  of  a  sort  to  illustrate  the  ease  with 
which  good  philosophical  reasons  can  be  found  to  defend  the 
indefensible — take  for  example  the  justification  of  the  anoma- 
lies of  the  English  representative  system.  The  main  outcome 
is  a  theory  of  the  state  as  a  representation  of  interests  or 
classes,  which  are  to  serve  as  a  check  on  one  another,  and 
guard  each  its  own  order  from  oppression  by  the  rest — a  doc- 
trine well  adapted,  when  manipulated  expertly  by  politicians, 
to  hinder  the  removal  of  existing  class  privileges,  while  yet 
paying  in  a  verbal  currency  the  claims  of  every  class  alike. 

§  3.  Other  Intuitionalists.    Caldermood.    Martineau.    Ferrier 

I.  As  a  philosophical  school,  Common  Sense  reached  its 
culmination  in  Hamilton,  and  of  other  contemporary  repre- 
sentatives of  the  tendency  a  brief  mention  is  sufficient.    The 


The  InHiitionalist  School  37 

most  eminent  name  here  is  that  of  Thomas  Chalmers,  whose 
reputation,  however,  is  due  to  his  career  as  a  preacher  and  phi- 
lanthropist rather  than  as  a  philosopher.  Chalmers'  chief  specu- 
lative interest  is  in  the  application  of  philosophy  to  theology; 
he  perhaps  comes  nearest  to  independent  thinking  in  the  dis- 
tinction which  he  draws,  in  connection  with  the  argument  from 
design,  between  the  origin  and  laws  of  matter,  and  the  disposi- 
tions of  matter,  on  which  last  he  made  the  strength  of  the 
argument  to  turn.  Chalmers  was  most  immediately  influ- 
enced by  Brown  in  his  philosophical  standpoint;  and  Brown's 
influence  continued  for  a  decade  or  so  to  be  predominant. 
Among  other  writers  of  the  period,  all  of  them  identified  with 
the  Scottish  tradition,  may  be  mentioned  the  names  of  John 
Young,  George  Payne,  John  Ballantyne,  and  John  Abercrombie, 
the  last  the  author  of  two  popular  manuals  which  passed 
through  numerous  editions.  Isaac  Taylor  and  Samuel  Bailey 
were  also  influenced  by  Reid,  though  the  connection  is  a  much 
looser  one.  Bailey  is  one  of  the  most  prolific  writers  of  the 
period  on  philosophic  and  semi-philosophic  themes,  and  dis- 
plays a  good  deal  of  vigor  and  independence  of  thought,  es- 
pecially in  criticism;  he  deserves  well  as  a  defender  of  in- 
tellectual liberty. 

In  the  thirties  Brown's  star  rapidly  waned,  and  Hamilton's 
came  to  be  in  the  ascendent;  and  Hamilton's  prestige  con- 
tinued to  be  very  great  until  it  suffered  serious  damage  by 
the  publication  in  1865  of  J.  S.  Mill's  critical  attack.  While 
however  Hamilton  was  generally  recognized  on  the  basis  of 
his  attainments  and  reputation  as  the  leader  of  the  school, 
he  was  not  particularly  successful  in  securing  acceptance  for 
the  doctrines  on  whose  originality  he  most  prided  himself; 
the  peculiarities  of  his  theory  of  perception  were  largely  suf- 
fered to  drop  into  the  background,  and  the  Unknowable  was 
often  \Fiewed  with  active  suspicion.  Apart  from  Mansel,  the 
one  important  disciple  of  Hamilton  here  is  indeed  to  be  found 
in  the  opposite  camp  of  the  scientific  naturalists;    and  in 


38  English  and  American  Philosophy 

Herbert  Spencer  the  doctrine  is  turned  to  uses  with  which 
Hamilton  could  have  had  no  possible  sympathy.  In  a  few 
cases  an  open  revolt  took  place  among  those  who  sympathized 
with  his  general  position.  Thus  Richard  Lowndes  protests 
against  the  dangers  of  a  philosophy  which  undertakes  to  make 
us  Christians  by  first  making  us  thoroughgoing  sceptics,  and 
attempts  to  meet  Hamilton  and  Mansel  by  an  argument  in- 
tended to  show  that  the  mind  has  a  power  to  think  that  which 
it  cannot  imagine. 

2.  A  still  more  vigorous  attack,  from  the  standpoint  of  an 
interest  in  religious  knowledge,  upon  the  doctrine  of  the  mind^s 
imbecility,  came  from  Henry  Calderwood.  Calderwood's 
Philosophy  of  the  Infinite  is  an  able  piece  of  polemical  writ- 
ing, which  puts  its  finger  on  a  number  of  the  weak  points  in 
Hamilton's  position,  and  is  hardly  less  than  fatal  indeed  on  the 
supposition  that  one  accepts  sincerely,  as  Hamilton  did,  the 
fundamentals  of  the  Christian  belief  about  God.  Calder- 
wood has  little  difficulty  in  showing  the  absurdity  of  a  pre- 
tence to  religious  belief  which  denies  any  intelligible  content 
to  the  object  of  belief.  So  Hamilton's  underlying  thesis  that 
the  notion  of  the  Absolute,  or  God,  involves  an  entire  ab- 
sence of  relations,  is  subjected  to  a  damaging  criticism.  What 
Calderwood  himself  interprets  as  the  religious  demand,  is  the 
absence  in  God  of  a  necessary  relation  to  anything  beyond  his 
own  being.  God  is  no  less  truly  infinite  because  he  has  in- 
ternal relations  in  his  own  nature,  or  because  he  is  related  to 
a  world  of  his  own  creation;  religion  only  needs  to  hold  that 
he  has  an  existence  which  does  not  depend  on  these  related 
things,  that  he  is  subject  to  no  restrictive  conditions.  That 
the  full  content  of  the  infinite  God  docs  not  get  within  our 
minds,  or  that  our  thought  of  God  is  not  itself  infinite,  is 
indeed  self-evident;  but  this  does  not  prevent  our  having  a 
limited  knowledge  of  him  which  is  true  so  far  as  it  goes. 
Calderwood's  argument  here  involves  the  recognition  of  what 
would  now  be  called  the  externality  of  relations;  being  known 


Henry  Calderwood  39 

makes  no  difference  to  the  object  of  knowledge  itself.  It  in- 
volves also  the  repudiation  of  Hamilton's  doctrine  that  the  ob- 
ject must  actually  be  present  in  consciousness  in  order  in  the 
strict  sense  to  be  known;  "consciousness'^  is  the  sphere  in 
which  all  mental  operations  exist,  but  not  a  sphere  into  which 
external  realities  are  introduced.  When  he  comes  to  his 
own  alternative  doctrine  of  the  Infinite,  Calderwood  is  less 
plausible.  We  have,  it  appears,  an  immediate  intuition  of  God 
as  an  all-wise,  all-powerful,  all-just  being — an  intuition  inde- 
pendent of  reason,  and  justified  sufficiently  by  its  own  self- 
evidence.  Here  obviously  the  influence  of  a  robust  religious 
faith  is  more  in  evidence  than  a  nice  p>erception  of  the  philo- 
sophical problems  implicated.  There  is  not  even  any  serious  at- 
tempt to  analyze  and  define  the  conception  we  are  thus  asked 
to  take  on  trust,  though  the  assurance  that  our  knowledge  of 
God's  attributes  is  distinct  from  the  notion  of  human  attri- 
butes that  go  by  the  same  name  would  naturally  lead  one  to 
expect  further  explanation  about  their  source  and  nature. 
Calderwood  is  also  the  author,  among  other  books,  of  a  manual 
of  ethics  very  widely  used  for  a  time,  in  which  the  same  dog- 
matic intuitionalism  is  applied  to  ethical  theory. 

3.  In  America  the  sway  of  the  Scottish  philosophy  in  the 
colleges  was  for  a  time  almost  complete;  James  McCosh,  a 
pupil  of  Hamilton's,  who  was  called  to  America  in  1868  to 
become  president  of  the  College  of  New  Jersey  at  Princeton, 
is  its  most  prolific  and  most  able  representative.  America  had 
natural  points  of  contact  with  the  intuitionalist  creed,  in  its 
practical  and  realistic  temper  of  mind,  its  dislike  for  the  refine- 
ments of  speculation,  and  its  demand  for  dogmatic  assurance 
to  serve  as  the  basis  for  an  active  and  aggressive  life  ruled  by 
conventional  religious  and  economic  ideals;  so  that  McCosh 
is  inclinogl  to  pose  at  times  as  sponsor  for  a  distinctively 
American  philosophy.  McCosh's  criticisms  of  sensationalism 
are  often  well  taken,  but  his  own  contributions  to  philosophy 
are  unimpressive;  he  has  set  forth  however  in  systematic  and 


40  English  and  American  Philosophy 

convenient  form  the  intuitionalistic  convictions  of  his  school, 
and  his  history  of  Scottish  philosophy  is  still  useful. 

4.  While  by  the  last  quarter  of  the  century  the  common- 
sense  philosophy  had  practically  disappeared  as  a  well-defined 
school  of  thought,  much  of  its  spirit  still  persisted  among  the 
fairly  numerous  dissenters  who  held  out  against  the  dominant 
new  Idealism;  and  a  few  additional  names  ought  probably  to 
be  classified  as  still  adherents  of  the  traditional  Scotch  realism. 
Henry  Veitch,  a  pupil  and  assistant  of  Hamilton,  as  well  as  his 
biographer,  is  one  of  the  few  who  seem  to  have  taken  seriously 
Hamilton's  peculiar  doctrine  of  perception;  later  on  Veitch 
brings  the  Scottish  standpoint  of  dualism  to  the  criticism  of 
Green's  idealistic  monism.  A  similar  standpoint  continues  to 
be  represented  by  Robert  Flint,  who  succeeded  Ferrier  in  the 
chair  of  Moral  Philosophy  at  St.  Andrew's  University.  And 
here  belongs  also  most  properly  one  of  the  greater  names  of 
the  century — that  of  the  Unitarian  minister  James  Martineau; 
though  the  connection  is  disguised  by  a  certain  shift  of  em- 
phasis, as  well  as  by  Martineau's  emotional  earnestness  and 
brilliant  rhetorical  gifts,  which  lend  to  his  style  an  eloquence 
seldom  in  philosophers  combined  in  the  same  degree  with  real 
vigor  of  thought.  Within  the  general  framework  of  a  theism 
where  God  stands  as  the  creator  of  a  real  physical  world  and 
of  real  finite  selves,  the  outstanding  points  in  Martineau's 
philosophy  are,  perhaps,  the  conception  of  true  causality  as 
always  the  expression  of  active  will;  of  the  self  as  the  deposi- 
tory of  a  limited  portion  of  the  causal  energy  that  resides  ulti- 
mately in  God,  through  which  the  self  is  raised  as  an  agent 
above  the  world  of  passive  phenomena,  and  given  the  power  of 
free  response  to  the  Divine  Archetype;  of  Conscience  as  point- 
ing unmistakably  to  an  eternal  Lawgiver,  apart  from  whom  the 
notion  of  a  law  imposed  upon  us,  and  coming  home  to  our 
consciousness  in  the  sense  of  duty,  has  no  meaning;  of  knowl- 
edge as  in  essence  always  a  judgment,  which  affirms  existence 
of  an  object  over  against  the  Ego;  and  of  the  fundamental 


James  Mar  tine  au  41 

reasonableness  of  putting  trust  in  the  testimony  of  our  facul- 
ties, alike  intellectual  and  emotional,  in  their  natural  exer- 
cise. Martineau's  argument  for  God  has  two  chief  steps — the 
metaphysical  argument  from  Causation,  which,  as  Power,  not 
mere  Law,  is  unintelligible  except  in  terms  of  the  activity  of  a 
personal  Will;  and  the  revelation,  in  conscience,  of  the  nature 
of  this  Cause,  as  a  righteous  lawgiver  and  source  of  moral 
value.  Martineau's  most  original  contribution  to  philosophy, 
however,  is  his  ethical  theory  of  an  inherent  gradation  of  value 
among  human  motives,  which  we  are  constituted  with  the 
power  of  perceiving  directly  under  conditions  of  their  concrete 
presence.  It  is  arguable  that  such  an  instinctive  feeling  for 
differences  of  quality  is  a  more  important  feature  of  the  ethical 
experience  than  most  systems  have  recognized.  But  the  ab- 
solute scale  of  motives  in  which  Martineau  sees  it  taking  form 
has  apparently  been  found  verifiable  by  no  one  but  himself. 
One  further  point  against  the  theory  is  the  fact  that,  as  he 
admits,  the  same  immediacy  may  attach  to  the  comparison  of 
very  complex  groups  of  motives — and  the  ethical  situation  is 
nearly  always  complex — as  attaches  to  simple  ones;  and  this 
can  apparently  on  his  showing  be  accounted  for  only  by  assign- 
ing to  the  intuitive  machinery  a  degree  of  intricacy  very 
difficult  to  accept. 

5.  Two  names  have  been  left  to  the  conclusion  of  this 
chapter  because,  while  they  have  their  roots  in  the  Scottish 
tradition,  they  depart  from  it  somewhat  widely  in  the  general 
direction  of  the  later  German  idealism.  J.  D.  Morell  was  led 
by  his  early  admiration  for  the  writings  of  Thomas  Brown 
to  study  philosophy  in  Scotland,  and  from  thence  he  pro- 
ceeded on  a  philosophical  pilgrimage  to  Germany  and  to 
France.  This  continental  influence  shows  itself  in  an  emphasis 
on  the  distinction  between  Understanding  and  Reason,  which 
last  Morell  thinks  competent  to  ground  a  knowledge  of  ab- 
solute reality  or  God;  the  nature  of  Reason  however  he  leaves 
obscure.     Morell  had  read  widely,  and  a  real  catholicity  of 


42  English  and  American  Philosophy 

mind  is  in  evidence  in  his  writings;  his  History  of  Modern 
Philosophy  was  a  useful  survey  of  the  field  of  contemporary 
thought,  which  helped  break  down  the  insularity  of  British 
metaphysics. 

James  Ferrier  has  much  more  claim  to  rank  as  an  original 
thinker.  In  spite  of  a  community  with  German  absolutism 
in  the  outcome,  Ferrier  himself  asserted,  even  with  heat,  that 
his  philosophy  was  autochth3nious;  and  this  is  substantially 
the  case.  His  speculations  show  everywhere  a  Scottish  back- 
ground; and  while  he  had  what  for  his  time  was  a  consid- 
erable acquaintance  at  first  hand  with  German  philosophical 
literature,  he  never  fully  understood  its  point  of  view.  Thus 
his  criticisms  of  Kant  are  frequently  wide  of  the  mark,  and 
Hegel  he  himself  confesses  to  be  "impenetrable  almost  through- 
out as  a  mountain  of  adamant." 

Ferrier's  philosophy  shows  a  certain  naivete  which  makes 
him  nearly  always  interesting  and  amusing  reading,  but  which 
discounts  somewhat  the  claims  he  is  disposed  to  advance  for  it. 
His  interest  is  primarily  in  logical  system,  and  in  the  progres- 
sive discovery  of  chains  of  reasoning;  and  in  consequence  there 
is  a  character  of  remoteness  and  unreality  which  is  seldom 
quite  absent  from  his  speculations.  He  is  aware  of  this  him- 
self, but  shifts  the  responsibility  to  the  nature  of  philosophy. 
It  is  nothing  against  the  philosopher,  he  urges,  that  his  results 
controvene  universal  convictions,  and  are  out  of  touch  with 
the  supposed  realities  of  man^s  daily  life;  philosophizing  is 
concerned  solely  with  processes  of  rigid  deduction,  and  ought 
therefore  to  hold  natural  human  thinking  cheap.  In  such  an 
attitude  he  is  clearly  influenced  by  his  reaction  against  the 
pedestrian  methods  of  the  common-sense  school,  and  its  lack 
of  thoroughgoing  logical  rigor.  For  Ferrier,  psychology  with 
its  empirical  analysis  of  the  mind  is  not  only  inadequate,  but 
is  wholly  in  the  wrong;  so  that  in  fact  one  can  be  pretty  sure 
of  reaching  truth  by  taking  its  pronouncements,  and  just  re- 
versing them.    The  only  method  not  philosophically  worthless 


James  Ferrier  43 

is  that  of  a  strict  and  necessary  deduction  from  self-evident 
premises;  and  in  his  chief  writing  he  makes  a  brave  attempt 
to  live  up  to  such  an  ideal.  In  this  there  is  rather  too  strong 
a  suggestion  of  the  clever  pupil  who  shows  his  independence 
by  going  to  the  opposite  extreme  from  the  accepted  opinions 
of  his  teachers;  and  the  impression  is  strengthened  by  Ferrier's 
constant  emphasis  on  the  certainty  and  absoluteness  of  his 
own  conclusions, — his  Institutes  is  "incontrovertible  at  every 
point," — and  the  too  frequent  implication  that  all  or  nearly 
all  of  previous  philosophy  is  negligible. 

In  some  earlier  articles  which  Ferrier  contributed  to  Black- 
woods',  there  is  the  suggestion  of  a  more  human  touch.  Here, 
something  in  the  vein  of  Fichte,  we  find  an  attempt  to  inter- 
pret Consciousness  as  the  autonomous  expression,  not  of  the 
"mind," — the  mind  of  the  psychologist  is  a  mere  string  of 
changes  with  the  one  central  fact  of  the  Ego  that  takes  cog- 
nizance of  these  changes  totally  ignored, — but  of  a  living 
reality,  the  man,  in  the  form  of  an  act  absolutely  original  and 
underived;  the  external  world  does  not  stand  over  against  the 
self  as  its  cause,  but  both  come  into  being  through  this  free 
act  of  discrimination  or  negation  which  resists  or  denies 
the  impressions  of  sense,  as  the  moral  life  grows  out  of  a  re- 
sistance to  the  passions  and  desires.  It  will  be  sufficient,  how- 
ever, to  deal  with  Ferrier^s  doctrine  in  the  form  in  which  it 
is  set  forth  in  his  chief  writing — the  Institutes  of  Metaphysic. 

6.  The  purpose  of  Ferrier's  philosophy  is  to  show  the  way 
of  escape  from  relativism  and  scepticism,  in  the  interests  of  a 
knowledge  of  absolute  and  indubitable  reality.  The  initial 
proposition  on  which  the  whole  argument  turns  is  the  Hamil- 
tonian  doctrine  that  we  never  can  know  anything  as  an  object 
without  at  the  same  time  knowing  along  with  it  a  subject  or  ego, 
— as  Ferrier  somewhere  puts  it,  that  everything  is  "steeped 
primordially  in  me."  From  this  proposition  he  proceeds  to 
draw  a  number  of  analytical  conclusions,  of  which  the  general 
outcome  is,  that  the  common-sense  and  psychological  claim 


44  English  and  American  Philosophy 

that  we  can  know  matter  by  itself,  or  mind  by  itself,  is  absurd 
and  self-contradictory.  In  this  way  we  have  refuted  the  thesis 
alike  of  materialist  and  of  psychological  idealist,  since  each 
supposes  that  to  be  real  which  is  only  one  indivisible  aspect  of 
the  sole  knowable  reality;  and  absolute  idealism  is  left  alone  in 
the  field. 

May  it  not  be  possible  however  that,  in  spite  of  our  neces- 
sary ignorance  of  matter  per  se,  matter  may  conceivably  exist? 
This  Ferrier  meets  by  the  second  crucial  point  in  his  system, 
his  Theory  of  Ignorance,  or  Agnoiology,  on  the  originality  of 
which  he  specially  prides  himself.  Here  the  thesis  is,  that  as  ig- 
norance is  a  defect  of  knowledge,  we  cannot  properly  be  said  to 
be  ignorant  of  anything  unless  it  is  capable  of  being  known, 
by  some  higher  intelligence  if  not  by  ours.  The  only  thing 
which  in  strictness  is  unknowable  is  the  absurd,  the  meaning- 
less, the  self-contradictory;  and  there  is  no  sense  in  saying  that 
we  are  ignorant  of  that  which  has  no  meaning.  We  cannot 
intelligibly  speak  of  being  ignorant  of  the  "fact'^  that  the  part 
is  greater  than  the  whole,  or  that  two  and  two  make  five.  But 
now  if  we  can  only  be  ignorant  of  that  which  is  a  possible 
object  of  knowledge,  then  we  cannot  be  ignorant  of  matter 
per  se,  since  matter  per  se  is  not  a  possible  object  of  knowledge. 
The  one  thing  of  which  we  can  be  ignorant  is  that  same  unity 
of  subject  and  object  which  also  is  the  one  thing  we  can  know. 
And  if  thus  ignorance  and  knowledge  both  alike  lead  us  to  the 
same  result,  scepticism  has  broken  down,  and  we  have  passed 
from  Epistemology  to  Ontology ;  we  have  now  the  right  to  say, 
not  merely  that  subject  plus  object  is  the  absolute  for  human 
knowledge,  but  that  it  is  the  absolute  without  qualification. 
Not  however  my  self  and  its  objects  merely;  as  the  necessary 
datum  is  not  my  self  and  object,  but  only  some  self  and  object, 
it  is  possible  to  think  of  a  connection  of  objects  with  some 
other  self.  And  since  we  have  reason  to  believe  that  /  have 
not  always  existed,  we  reach  the  conception  of  an  eternal  Ego- 


James  Ferrier  45 

plus-objects,  or  of  a  God-thinking-the-world,  as  the  ultimate 
ontological  fact. 

7.  It  is  apparent  that  the  burden  of  the  system  is  carried 
by  its  initial  proposition;  and  about  this  it  is  not  so  difficult  to 
raise  doubts  as  Ferrier  would  have  us  think.  Ferrier  tries  to 
give  it,  as  indeed  he  is  bound  to  do  by  his  principles  of  method, 
the  standing  of  a  necessary  truth  whose  denial  involves  self- 
contradiction;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  plainly  an  empirical 
truth  if  it  is  true  at  all,  and  depends  upon  the  results  of  actual 
observation.  Now  is  it  so  that  we  never  know  anything  with- 
out also  at  the  same  time  knowing  the  self  along  with  it? 
Ferrier  himself  recognizes  that  there  are  cases  where  at  first 
glance  at  least  we  seem  not  to  have  any  idea  of  the  self  in 
mind;  and  he  meets  the  difficulty  by  supposing  that  the  idea 
of  the  self  may  be  present  in  varying  degrees,  and  sometimes  in 
so  slight  a  degree  as  almost  to  escape  our  notice.  But  if  we 
leave  the  matter  here,  we  have  an  insecure  foundation  for  a 
system  intended  to  possess  demonstrative  certainty.  Neces- 
sity which  depends  upon  a  difficult  and  subtle  matter  of  intro- 
spection, where  trained  observers  have  often  professed  that 
they  found  no  trace  of  the  self  at  all,  and  where  at  least  one 
may  honestly  be  in  doubt,  is  hardly  what  a  systematic  meta- 
physics is  after.  Considerations  more  rigorous  and  compelling 
are  called  for  if  the  theory  is  to  hold  securely. 

Ferrier  has  several  suggestions  to  offer.  The  one  which  prob- 
ably is  nearest  to  constituting  the  main  source  of  his  own  con- 
viction is  as  follows:  We  cannot,  he  holds,  possibly  think  of 
matter  by  itself,  because  the  very  attempt  to  think  it  thus 
necessarily  involves  the  self  as  thinking.  Try  to  imagine  the 
world  existing  as  a  bare  material  universe  with  all  thinking 
selves  removed.  But  is  every  self  gone?  Must  not  at  least  the 
''you"  who  does  the  imagining  still  be  on  the  ground  in  order 
that  a  world  may  be  thought  of  as  not  containing  any  self? 

About  this  argument  however  there  are  several  points  that 


46         English  and  American  Philosophy 

might  be  noticed.  The  one  really  self-evident  thing  here,  to 
begin  with,  is  this,  that  there  cannot  be  an  object  of  knowl- 
edge except  as  also  there  is  someone  to  know;  known  objects 
imply  a  self.  But  this  is  a  truism;  it  means  that  v/e  cannot 
know  a  thing  without  knowing  it.  And  unless  we  beg  the  ques- 
tion, and  assume  that  nothing  can  exist  apart  from  being 
known,  it  is  still  open  to  suppose  that  the  existence  which  we 
know  may  be  separable  from  the  knowledge  of  it;  in  which 
case  the  fact  that  the  knowledge  implies  a  knowing  self  is  quite 
irrelevant. 

But  now  in  the  second  place,  even  in  terms  of  knowledge  we 
still  are  falling  short  of  Ferrier's  claim,  which  is,  not  that  a 
self  must  be  there  whenever  anything  is  known,  but  that  it 
must  be  an  actual  part  of  the  content  of  knowledge.  But 
the  fact  to  which  he  is  appealing  is  calculated,  if  anything,  to 
throw  doubt  upon  this  thesis.  It  will  hardly  be  denied  that 
people  have  supposed  they  could  think  a  mindless  world,  and 
that  for  the  most  part  they  are  likely  to  be  puzzled  rather  than 
convinced  by  Ferrier's  proof  that  they  cannot.  But  this  would 
seem  to  show,  once  more,  that  when  they  think  of  a  ma- 
terial universe  the  thinking  self  is  quite  overlooked — that  is, 
is  not  a  part  of  what  they  are  knowing.  Later  on  they  may 
come  to  see  that  the  self  actually  was  there,  and  then  it  does 
enter  into  the  content  of  what  is  known;  but  the  unavoidable 
difference  in  the  way  in  which  we  have  to  describe  the  two  ex- 
periences throws  doubt  on  the  supposition  that  it  was  known 
before. 

And  now  finally,  even  if  Ferrier's  argument  were  accepted, 
it  would  carry  a  difficulty  for  his  own  philosophy.  For  if 
I  cannot  think  of  anything  without  this  presence  of  the  think- 
ing ego,  then,  contrary  to  what  Ferrier  maintains,  it  is  my 
self  plus  the  object  which  is  the  ultimate,  and  not  a  self;  and 
not  only  matter,  but  other  selves  and  God,  can  be  thought  by 
me  as  existing  only  as  my  objects.  For  if  it  is  certain  that  I 
cannot  think  a  mindless  world  for  the  reason  that  I  must 


James  Ferrier  47 

be  there  to  think  it,  it  is  in  the  same  degree  certain  that  a 
God  existing  prior  to  my  human  life  cannot  be  thought  by  me, 
because  I  equally  am  present  when  I  try  to  think  Him. 

A  second  and  perhaps  stronger  ground  that  Ferrier  gives 
for  his  thesis  is,  that  unless,  when  I  perceived  an  object,  I 
were  conscious  of  myself,  I  could  never  remember  the  per- 
ception as  mine;  since  if  I  failed  to  recognize  the  "me"  in  the 
original  experience,  I  could  not  find  it  in  the  later  one.  Here 
the  difficulty  seems  to  come  from  overlooking  another  am- 
biguity. The  self,  once  more,  must  be  there  in  any  knowing 
experience,  in  the  form  of  experiencing,  or  feeling,  or  ''living" 
itself.  But  that  there  cannot  be  an  immediate  feeling  ex- 
perience which  is  not  at  the  same  time  an  object  of  knowledge , 
is  a  claim  that  needs  further  evidence.  It  is  at  least  a  pos- 
sibility that  an  experience  can  be  lived  through  without  being 
contemplated  as  an  object,  and  if  so,  that  it  may  conceivably 
have  some  quality — it  may  be  a  relationship  to  specific  pur- 
poses, or  to  judgments  of  appreciation — ^which  later  enables 
it  when  looked  back  upon  in  memory  to  be  known  as  mine; 
since  to  be  my  experience  is  simply  to  be  recognized  as 
of  a  piece  with  the  continuous  context  I  learn  to  call  my 
life. 

It  should  be  added  that  there  is  a  way  in  which  Ferrier 
might  possibly  be  interpreted  which  would  relieve  his  theory 
of  some  of  its  difficulties,  and  bring  it  very  closely  into  line 
with  the  later  and  more  orthodox  form  of  English  absolutism; 
and  a  suggestion  of  this  might  perhaps  be  found  in  his  use 
of  the  subject-object  concept  to  solve  among  other  things  the 
problem  of  the  particular  and  the  universal.  According  to 
this  solution,  what  constitutes  the  universal  is  the  self-aspect 
of  experience,  as  common  to  every  piece  of  knowledge  alike; 
whereas  the  object,  although  some  object  must  always  be  pres- 
ent, changes  in  its  particular  form  from  moment  to  moment. 
It  is  as  a  matter  of  fact  difficult  to  see  that  this  has  any  real 
relevancy  to  the  historical  problem  of  the  universal,  unless  we 


48  English  and  American  Philosophy 

take  the  "self"  to  mean  the  universal  bonds  of  connection  that 
unify  experience,  and  not  the  ego  of  the  Scottish  philosophers. 
But  there  seems  no  sufficient  reason  to  suppose  that  Ferrier 
intended  any  such  thoroughgoing  reconstruction  of  the  concept. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  UTILITARIANS 

§  I.  Bentham.    James  Mill 

I.  The  combination  of  radicalism  in  politics,  and  sensa- 
tionalism in  philosophy,  which  goes  by  the  name  of  ITtilitarian- 
ism,  is  by  general  consent  the  most  vigorous  and  original  prod- 
uct of  English  thinking  in  the  first  part  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. Spiritually  the  Utilitarians  are  descendants  of  the  Ra- 
tionalists of  the  preceding  age.  There  is  the  same  critical,  un- 
imaginative, unemotional  outlook  on  life,  which  sees  what  it 
does  see  with  extraordinary  clearness  and  steadiness,  but  which 
is  blind  to  the  subtler  shades  of  insight  that  do  not  lend  them- 
selves to  a  precise  intellectual  and  logical  formulation.  The 
success  of  the  Utilitarians  is  partly  due  to  this  fact  that  by 
admitting  nothing  into  their  scheme  of  things  whose  bearing 
was  not  to  them  pointed  and  definite,  they  were  able  to  work 
for  certain  limited  aims  with  perfect  confidence  and  directness. 
They  knew  what  they  wanted,  were  sure  it  was  the  only  thing 
worth  wanting,  and  so  were  in  a  position  to  attempt  the  get- 
ting of  it  in  the  most  effective  way.  But  in  consequence  they 
tended  to  miss  other  aspects  of  substantial  good  in  a  world 
in  which  truth  is  too  large  to  be  summed  up  in  neat  and  simple 
formulas,  and  where  precision  and  limitation  of  end  are  there- 
fore not  an  unmixed  blessing. 

Between  the  Rationalists  and  the  Utilitarians  there  is,  how- 
ever, one  important  difference,  a  difference  primarily  of  method. 
This  comes  out  clearly  in  the  contrast  between  the  watchword 
of  the  French  Revolution — the  Rights  of  Man, — and  the  sacred 

49 


so         English  and  American  Philosophy 

word  of  the  newer  movement — Utility.  Why  for  example  is 
political  liberty  desirable?  Because,  said  the  Rationalists,  man 
has  certain  natural  rights  which  are  violated  by  the  necessity 
of  submission  to  a  ruler  or  a  ruling  class.  Because,  said  the 
Utilitarians,  liberty  brings  about  a  preponderance  of  pleasure 
over  pain,  and  a  form  of  government  which  produces  this  re- 
sult is  thereby  empirically  justified.  In  some  ways,  though 
not  in  all,  the  Utilitarian  method  was  a  great  practical  ad- 
vance over  previous  radicalism.  To  stop  declaiming  about 
abstract  and  inalienable  rights,  and  to  set  out  to  locate  just 
the  points  in  which  existing  institutions  had  vicious  results, 
was  in  so  far  a  gain.  And  in  this  the  chief  importance  of  the 
movement  lies.  The  Utilitarians  are  primarily  political  re- 
formers. They  possess  a  philosophy,  an  ethics,  a  psychology, 
an  economics,  but  these  are  all  subordinate  to  their  practical 
ends;  they  are  interested  in  them  first  of  all  as  a  background  to 
their  social  schemes,  and  as  instruments  of  attack  upon  tradi- 
tion. 

2.  Utilitarianism  has  its  proximate  starting  point  in  Jeremy 
Bentham.  In  point  of  time  considerably  the  larger  half  of 
Bentham's  life  belongs  to  the  preceding  century,  and  his  most 
important  writing,  for  philosophy,  was  first  published  in  1789. 
Intellectually  however  he  is  identified  closely  with  the  modem 
age.  Outwardly  his  life  was  highly  uneventful;  he  lived  prac- 
tically as  a  recluse,  coming  into  contact  with  the  actual  working 
of  things,  and  with  real  men  and  women,  only  through  the 
medium  of  a  small  circle  of  immediate  friends  and  more  or 
less  adoring  disciples.  It  would  be  possible  to  exaggerate  the 
effects  of  this  isolation.  Bentham  had  a  pretty  shrewd  notion 
of  what  was  going  on  in  the  world  of  affairs,  and  he  shows 
everywhere  a  keen  and  ironic  sense  for — more  particularly — 
the  irrational  side  of  human  nature,  especially  the  human 
nature  of  lawyers  and  politicians.  But  in  many  ways  he  re- 
mained nevertheless  all  his  life  curiously  naive.  To  this  it  is 
to  be  added  that  he  was  naturally  a  man  of  limited  sympathy 


Jeremy  Bentham  51 

and  insight — a  limitation  left  uncorrected  by  a  wide  human 
experience.  He  had  a  marvellously  precise,  clear  mind,  which 
took  delight  in  what  ordinarily  men  find  extremely  dreary — 
the  work  of  analyzing,  classifying,  drawing  fine  distinctions, 
codifying;  Bentham  might  be  defined,  one  of  his  biographers 
says,  as  a  codifying  animal.  But  he  was  deficient  both  in 
warmth  and  in  depth;  not  only  was  he  himself  not  moved  by 
enthusiasms,  strong  feeling,  uncalculating  impulse,  but  he  was 
entirely  unable  to  understand  such  motives  in  other  men,  and, 
save  as  a  matter  of  pathology,  ignored  them  in  his  theories. 

These  limitations  show  conspicuously  in  the  ethical  theory 
with  which  Bentham's  name  is  connected.  This  theory  as 
understood  by  him  is  very  simple.  "Nature  has  placed  man- 
kind under  the  governance  of  two  sovereign  masters — pain 
and  pleasure/'  Pleasure  is  the  only  good,  pain  the  only  evil; 
and  so  the  consequences  in  terms  of  these  are  what  determine 
the  goodness  or  badness  of  an  act.  The  proper  ethical  atti- 
tude is  accordingly  one  of  calculation — reckoning  up  the  pleas- 
urable and  painful  consequences,  striking  the  balance,  and  de- 
ciding for  the  side  which  shows  the  surplus;  and  the  most  vir- 
tuous man  is  he  who  calculates  most  successfully.  Bentham 
thought  this  capable  of  taking  a  mathematical  form,  and  it 
was  indeed  his  great  aim  as  an  ethicist  to  work  out  a  calculus 
of  pleasure  that  should  afford  scientific  guidance  to  conduct. 
The  primarily  self-seeking  character  of  human  nature  is  frankly 
granted.  "Dream  not  that  men  will  move  their  little  finger 
to  save  you  unless  their  advantage  in  so  doing  is  obvious  to 
them";  or  again,  taking  the  whole  of  life  together  "there  exists 
not,  nor  ever  can  exist^  that  human  being  in  whose  instance  any 
public  interest  he  can  have  will  not  in  so  far  as  depends  upon 
himself  have  been  sacrificed  to  his  own  personal  interest." 
Among  the  pleasures  which  men  feel  are  indeed  to  be  reck- 
oned those  of  sympathy,  which  may  lead  us  to  acts  that  bene- 
fit our  fellows;  and  since  our  happiness  is  so  dependent  on 
the  good  will  of  others,  practical  wisdom  would  urge  us  to 


52         English  and  American  Philosophy 

cultivate  and  strengthen  this.  But  sympathy  is  naturally  weak, 
and  can  seldom  hold  its  own  in  competition  with  more  personal 
claims;  and  in  any  case  it  is  only  as  a  source  of  pleasure  to 
ourselves  that  it  constitutes  a  motive.  For  duty,  as  something 
set  over  against  self-interest,  Bentham's  system  finds  no  place; 
if  the  word  "ought"  be  admissible  at  all,  he  remarks,  it  ''ought" 
to  be  bamished  from  the  vocabulary  of  morals.  In  its  original 
and  proper  sense,  duty  is  simply  that  which  the  law  will  punish 
me  if  I  fail  to  do;  or,  in  a  secondary  sense  which  Bentham 
identifies  with  "moral"  duty,  it  borrows  its  force  from  the  vari- 
ous mortifications  that  come  to  one  who  has  gained  the  ill-will 
of  the  general  public,  and  from  the  pleasures  of  a  good  repu- 
tation. The  business  of  the  moralist,  therefore,  is  not  to 
preach  to  the  vicious  man  his  duties;  since  vice  is  only  a  mis- 
calculation, we  should  prove  to  him  that  the  immoral  action  is 
against  his  self-interest,  and  show  how  erroneous  an  estimate 
he  makes  of  pleasures  and  pains.  The  final  criterion  of  con- 
duct is,  to  be  sure,  not  any  particular  man's  pleasure,  but 
the  pleasure  of  the  social  whole;  and  just  how  we  get  the 
right  to  make  this  transition  the  ethical  critic  will  need  to 
scrutinize  carefully.  It  is  undoubtedly  a  very  weak  joint 
in  the  Utilitarian  armor.  But  at  any  rate  Bentham  did  not 
hold  that  the  "greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number"  was 
to  be  enforced  as  a  mysterious  ultimate  truth,  dependent  on 
disinterested  motives.  Its  practical  sanction  is  entirely  definite 
and  unideal;  it  consists  in  specific  rewards,  namely,  which  so- 
ciety attaches  to  the  things  that  make  for  the  general  good, 
and  in  penalties  affixed  to  anti-social  acts. 

3.  It  does  not  need  much  argument  to  show  that  the  con- 
ception of  human  nature  which  this  implies  is  inadequate  to 
the  facts.  The  sense  of  personal  honor,  the  respect  for  settled 
ideals  of  character,  the  appeal  which  good  taste  and  the  aes- 
thetic beauty  of  righteousness  make  to  us,  indeed  most  of  the 
finer  fruits  of  moral  development,  escape  the  net  of  Bentham ^s 
mathematical  calculation  of  pleasures  and  pains.     Neverthe- 


Jeremy  Bentham  53 

less  this  after  all  affects  but  slightly  the  peculiar  value  of  his 
work;  in  some  degree  it  may  even  be  a  merit  for  his  special 
purpose.  For  while  Utilitarianism,  it  is  true,  is  on  one  side  a 
hedonistic  theory  of  life  for  the  individual  man,  it  is  not  as  such 
that  Bentham  is  mainly  interested  in  it,  but  as  a  program, 
rather,  of  legal  and  political  reform.  And  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  reformer,  many  of  the  difficulties  which  beset  Utili- 
tarianism as  a  theoretical  ethics  have  only  a  minor  impor- 
tance. So  for  example  the  transition  from  egoistic  to  univer- 
salistic  good.  For  ethics  this  is  a  fundamental  problem;  why 
should  a  man,  unless  he  happens  to  feel  like  it,  adopt  as  his 
motto  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number,  rather 
than  the  greatest  happiness  of  number  one?  It  may  be  that,  as 
in  Bentham's  own  case,  he  is  so  constituted  that  he  gets  most 
pleasure  for  himself  by  disinterested  public  service,  and  then 
for  him  the  particular  problem  will  not  exist;  but  there  seems 
no  reason  why  he  should  plume  himself  morally  on  this 
account.  But  now  if  the  formula  is  primarily  intended  to 
serve  as  a  guide  to  the  legislator  and  lawmaker,  no  transition 
is  called  for.  We  are  already  concerned  here,  not  with  what 
a  man  sets  up  as  his  personal  end,  but  with  what  impartial 
reason  dictates  as  good  for  men  as  members  of  society.  And 
from  this  standpoint  there  is  no  inconsistency — and  on  the 
whole  it  represents  the  fact — in  saying  that  pleasure  and 
pain  are  the  comprehensive  human  motives.  At  least  they  are 
the  things  on  which  the  law  has  to  rely  in  order  to  restrain 
wrongdoers;  if,  or  in  so  far  as,  people  are  actuated  by  more 
disinterested  and  ideal  motives,  there  is  no  need  for  laws  and 
judges.  It  is  no  doubt  desirable  that  moral  actions  should 
be  the  natural  expression  of  an  inner  moral  disposition;  but 
it  is  the  first  business  of  the  legislator  to  get  external  results, 
and  not  to  develop  character. 

And  the  method  of  legislation  is  in  large  degree  just  Ben- 
tham's calculus.  Whatever  may  be  true  of  the  personal  life, 
the  lawmaker  has  little  option  in  the  matter;  his  only  recourse 


54         English  and  American  Philosophy 

is  to  a  methodic  balancing  of  the  particular  gains  and  losses 
which  a  proposed  measure  may  be  expected  to  occasion.  So 
also  of  the  end  in  view;  it  is  only  by  testing  laws  and  institu- 
tions in  terms  of  specific  facts  of  human  welfare — the  actual 
happiness  or  unhappiness  of  individual  human  beings — that  we 
avoid  the  risk  of  turning  our  principles  into  "vague  general- 
ities." If  indeed  a  man  wishes  to  guide  his  own  life  by  the  light 
of  his  inner  feelings  of  approval,  Bentham  raises  no  particular 
objection;  in  fact  he  allows  the  possibility  that  as  a  matter 
of  theory  such  feelings  may  play  a  necessary  part.  The  recog- 
nition of  the  claims  of  utility  itself  is  after  all  a  case  of  aj>- 
proval.  But  when  we  set  out  to  coerce  our  neighbors,  at  any 
rate,  we  need  a  more  objective  standard  than  that  of  private 
feeling  or  opinion;  and  to  the  central  importance  of  this  last 
consideration  Bentham  expressly  subordinates  all  others.  Much 
the  same  thing  may  be  remarked  of  another  special  aspect  of 
his  hedonistic  theory.  Bentham  insists  that,  since  pleasure  is 
the  sole  end,  consequences,  and  never  motives,  are  the  objects 
of  the  moral  judgment;  a  motive  in  itself  is  always  good,  since 
the  only  motive  is  the  desire  for  pleasure,  and  pleasure  cannot 
be  otherwise  than  good.  And  this  has  plausibility,  again,  when 
we  translate  it  into  its  practical  equivalent ;  alike  for  the  social 
critic,  and  for  the  judge  who  administers  the  law,  the  imputa- 
tion of  motives  is  far  less  useful  than  an  investigation  of  the 
actual  results  of  conduct,  since  not  only  is  the  former  likely 
to  entangle  the  issue  in  personalities,  but  in  any  case  motives 
are  for  the  most  part  only  to  be  guessed  at. 

4.  Bentham  had  started  out  as  a  Tory,  with  an  optimistic 
confidence  that  in  order  to  enlist  the  cooperation  of  responsible 
statesmen,  and  to  get  reforms  accomplished,  it  was  only  neces- 
sary to  show  their  reasonableness.  Experience  however  had 
resulted  in  the  discovery  that  reason  is  not  the  only  force  in 
politics — a  conclusion  which  his  own  theories  of  human  nature 
might  have  suggested  sooner.  To  prepare  the  way  for  the 
Utilitarian  program  it  was  therefore  necessary  to  reconstruct 


James  Mill  55 

government  itself;  and  this  led  to  the  second  main  article  of 
his  creed.  The  problem  was  in  substance  this:  how  are  we  to 
get  rid  of  "sinister  interests" — private  and  class  interests,  that 
is,  in  men  in  authority,  hostile  to  the  general  welfare?  On 
Bentham's  own  showing  all  men  are  fundamentally  selfish;  and 
as  everyone  loves  power  and  wealth,  he  will,  if  he  is  set  in 
authority  over  others,  naturally  and  necessarily  exploit  them 
for  his  selfish  ends.  The  only  radical  remedy,  therefore,  is  to 
remove  the  distinction  between  rulers  and  ruled,  by  investing 
sovereignty  in  the  people  themselves.  A  pure  democracy  is 
indeed  in  modem  times  impossible;  but  by  letting  people  choose 
their  representatives,  and  then  binding  these  representatives 
so  closely  as  to  give  them  no  opportunity  to  betray  their  mas- 
ters, an  approximate  identity  of  interest  can  be  secured.  The 
political  ideal  of  the  Utilitarians  therefore  lay,  first  in  the  di- 
rection of  extending  the  ballot,  and  then  in  originating  devices 
that  should  subject  representatives  as  strictly  as  possible  to 
popular  control. 

5.  It  was  to  James  Mill,  Bentham's  most  able  disciple, 
that  the  elaboration  and  carrying  out  of  this  political  theory 
was  more  especially  due.  Although  not  himself  in  Parliament, 
— he  was  an  employee  of  the  Egist  India  Company, — ^by  his 
pen,  and  even  more  by  his  personal  advice  and  conversation, 
he  furnished  direction  and  motive  power  to  those  more  closely 
in  touch  with  the  practical  situation.  Personally  Mill  was 
not  an  attractive  man,  and  in  his  character  the  deficiencies  of 
the  rationalistic  type  display  themselves  even  in  aggravated 
form.  He  was  able  to  make  few  allowances  for  those  who  dis- 
agreed with  him  on  fundamentals,  and  an  air  of  unpleasant 
dogmatism  pervades  his  utterances.  Bentham  remarked 
that  Mill  argued  against  oppression  less  because  he  loved  the 
oppressed  than  because  he  hated  the  oppressing  few;  and  if 
this  means  that  a  dislike  of  abstract  injustice  and  unreason 
was  more  powerful  with  him  than  concrete  human  sympathies, 
it  bears  all  the  evidence  of  truth.    But  if  he  was  able  to  call 


56         English  and  American  Philosophy 

forth  little  love  even  from  a  favorite  son,  he  was  abundantly 
able  to  inspire  respect;  and  by  sheer  force  of  character  and 
intellect  he  came  to  be  one  of  the  most  powerful  influences  of 
his  day. 

6.  For  philosophy,  Mill's  significance  lies  chiefly  in  the  fact 
that  it  is  he  who  worked  out  most  consistently  and  thoroughly 
the  association  psychology  which  constitutes  the  theoretical 
foundation  for  the  Utilitarian  movement — a  service  which  does 
not  lose  its  value  even  though  the  attempt  resulted  in  bringing 
into  relief  the  limitations  of  the  sensationalistic  method.  It 
is  obvious  that  our  experience  conveys  to  us,  in  actually  living 
it,  a  totally  different  impression  from  that  complex  of  atomic 
sensations  to  which  by  Mill  it  is  reduced.  There  is  a  unity 
to  it,  a  significance,  a  sense  of  active  and  creative  participa- 
tion, a  relationship  to  purposes  individual  and  social,  which 
has  evaporated  in  the  results  of  the  associationists.  For  these 
results  one  has  to  adopt  a  secondary  and  more  or  less  artificial 
point  of  view — that  of  a  retrospective  analysis  into  simple  ele- 
ments, which  are  then  supposed  to  precede  the  actually  ex- 
perienced complexities,  and  to  generate  these  by  their  com.bina- 
tion.  The  association  school  deals  with  its  objects  in  the 
same  way  as  does  the  physical  scientist;  indeed  it  is  all  the 
time  using  physical  and  chemical  analogies  to  explain  the  way 
in  which  ideas  come  together.  Within  limits  there  is  no  ob- 
jection to  this;  but  it  is  likely  to  lead  us  to  forget  that  there  is 
another  and  inner  point  of  view  which  we  also  cannot  help 
adopting  on  occasion,  and  that  with  this  more  immediate  ex- 
perience the  results  of  an  objective  analysis  do  not  always  coin- 
cide, if  indeed  they  ever  do  completely.  Indeed  the  Utili- 
tarians grant  as  much.  Ideas  are  held  in  certain  cases  to  fol- 
low one  another  so  quickly — with  the  "rapidity  of  lightning" — 
as  to  form  compounds  that  seem  quite  different  from  the  com- 
ponent elements.  But  this  contrast  between  seeming  and  re- 
ality, which  has  an  easy  meaning  in  connection  with  the  world 
of  physical  facts,  needs  justification  when  applied  to  the  psy- 


James  Mill  57 

chological  realm,  where  in  some  sense  the  appearance  is  the 
real.  If  I  have  a  feeling  which  is  felt  as  so  and  so,  what  right 
have  I  to  say  that  it  really  is  something  quite  different?  When 
I  stop  to  examine  it  it  changes,  and  so  the  new  state  may  be 
different;  but  the  earlier  one  was,  it  may  naturally  be  claimed, 
just  what  it  was  felt  to  be. 

But  even  as  a  matter  of  analysis  Mill's  results  are  not  indis- 
putable, particularly  when  we  come  to  deal  with  those  more 
subtle  and  elusive  constituents  of  experience  describable  as 
feelings  of  transition  or  relationship.  Mill  is  determined  to 
reduce  everything  to  the  more  apparently  substantial  and 
steady  nuclei  in  the  stream  of  experience  to  which  we  give  the 
name  sensation,  and  to  overlook  the  equal  though  less  tangible 
reality  of  the  links  between  them.  If  however  from  the  con- 
crete experience  of  recognizing  two  sensations  in  temporal 
succession  we  abstract  the  sensations,  and  regard  them  in  their 
separateness,  we  are  entitled  to  do  the  same  thing  for  the  feeling 
of  temporal  transition  also,  since  this  is  equally  an  aspect  of  the 
original  fact.  And  with  the  recognition  of  relations,  that  uni- 
fied and  purposive  character  that  seems  to  belong  to  first-hand 
experience  has  no  need  to  be  overlooked,  particularly  as,  since 
Mill's  day,  this  has  received  a  very  substantial  backing  in  the 
science  of  biology;  the  conception  of  an  organism,  and  of  or- 
ganic ends,  not  only  gives  point  to,  but  renders  necessary  in 
some  fashion,  the  introduction  of  ends  into  psychology  also. 
For  Mill,  "desire"  is  strictly  interchangeable  with  the  mere 
"idea  of  a  pleasure,"  and  the  term  "instinct"  is  in  all  cases 
only  a  name  for  "nothing  but  our  ignorance";  to  appeal  to  in- 
stinct is  simply  to  confess  our  failure  in  tracing  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  mind  to  the  grand  comprehensive  principle  of 
association.  But  it  is  about  the  conception  of  instinct  that  the 
later  tendencies  in  psychology  largely  center;  and  they  force 
us  to  take  the  facts  of  the  mental  life  not  simply  as  atomic 
elements  to  be  grouped  by  association,  but  as  aspects  of  a 
living  and  continuous  process.    Mill  has  done  very  nearly  all 


58         English  and  American  Philosophy 

that  it  is  humanly  possible  to  do  with  the  data  of  isolated 
sensations  and  their  sequences;  but  the  more  rigorous  he  makes 
his  analysis,  the  clearer  it  becomes  that  the  endeavor  to  ex- 
plain the  life  of  conduct  in  terms  of  separate  feelings  breaks 
down  of  its  own  weight. 

7.  There  are  thus  two  serious  weaknesses  in  the  associa- 
tion psychology  as  worked  out  by  Mill — on  the  one  hand  the 
absence  of  a  recognition  of  any  "activity"  of  the  self,  or  the 
organism,  in  building  up  the  structure  of  experience,  and  on 
the  other,  or  "content"  side,  the  endeavor  to  get  along  without 
specific  facts  of  "relationship."  First,  to  dwell  a  little  further 
on  this  latter  point.  The  method  which  Mill  uses  to  avoid  the 
recognition  of  anything  specifically  different  from  sensation 
may  be  illustrated  by  his  discussion  of  "relative  terms."  What 
do  we  mean  here  by  the  relation  as  such?  Simply,  Mill  replies, 
a  relative  mime.  Thus  the  relation  of  fathership  and  sonship 
is  merely  the  fact  that  father  and  son  are  the  two  termini  of 
a  single  series  of  associated  objects  or  sensations  to  which  we 
assign  a  name;  but  then  we  forget  the  sensational  character 
of  the  fact,  turn  the  name  into  an  abstraction,  and  suppose  as  a 
consequence  that  we  are  dealing  with  a  new  fact,  or  a  "rela- 
tion." 

But  now  if  we  try  to  represent  to  ourselves  the  nature  of 
this  "train,"  and  ask  how  it  came  to  be  formed  in  the  first 
place,  it  becomes  apparent  that  there  already  are  simpler  re- 
lations to  be  found  internal  to  it,  apart  from  which  it  would 
disintegrate  completely;  and  to  give  any  intelligible  account 
of  these  more  ultimate  relations  which  does  not  presuppose  them 
to  begin  with,  is  a  task  that  strains  even  Mill's  ingenuity.  Take 
for  example  the  terms  "like"  and  "unlike."  These  represent, 
Mill  writes,  the  part  in  the  process  of  sensation  which  con- 
sists in  distinguishing  one  sensation  as  one,  another  as  another, 
and  for  this  it  is  only  necessary  that  we  have  the  sensations; 
having  two  sensations,  and  knowing  that  they  are  two,  are  one 
and  the  same  thing.    But  it  seems  evident  that  if  this  is  taken 


James  Mill  59 

as  it  stands,  it  is  not  true;  if  my  sole  data  are  two  facts, — a 
red  and  a  green  sensation,  say, — the  two  would  always  be  as 
disparate  as  the  feeling  I  have  today  is  from  the  feeling  I  may 
have  a  year  hence.  What  Mill  really  substitutes  for  the  two 
self-identical  sensations  is  the  experience  of  change  from  one 
sensation  to  another.  Now  it  may  reasonably  be  maintained 
that,  if  there  is  a  sense  in  which  knowing  that  I  have  a  pain 
can  be  defined  as  meaning  nothing  different  from  having  or 
feeling  the  pain,  so  having  a  change  of  sensation,  and  knowing 
that  I  have  it,  are  also  not  two  things,  but  one  and  the  same 
thing.  But  this  experience  of  change  is  something  more  than 
two  separate  sensations.  It  is,  as  Mill  himself  calls  it,  a 
process  of  sensation,  with  red  and  green  the  termini  of  the 
process  simply;  while  the  intervening  stage  of  "unlikeness" 
is  expressly  distinguished  as  not  a  distinct  sensation.  But  then 
must  it  not  be  something  different  from  a  sensation — that  is, 
a  relation?  That,  in  other  words,  which  enables  us  here  to 
speak  of  a  train  or  process  is,  not,  as  in  the  case  of  father  and 
son,  other  intervening  sensations  or  images,  but  just  the  con- 
necting link  of  relationship  itself;  and  through  this  alone  it 
comes  about  that  we  have  something  more  than  a  mere  series. 
Thus  Mill's  thesis  that  the  relation  of  unlikeness  is  nothing 
but  a  name  for  pairs  of  sensations  is  really  abandoned  for  the 
more  defensible  theory  that  unlikeness  is  a  new  element  in 
a  process  of  sensational  change,  and  the  empirical  proof  of 
his  doctrine  reduces  itself  simply  to  the  claim  that  relations 
between  sensations  must  be  given  somehow  as  factors  in  im- 
mediate experience,  instead  of  having  an  extra-experiential 
source;  the  identification  of  the  "process"  with  an  experience 
which  does  not  contain  the  specific  feeling  of  difference,  but 
is  made  up  of  bare  sensational  parts  that  are  different  purely 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  only  a  confusion.  A  similar  comment  is 
to  be  made  upon  Mill's  treatment  of  succession,  which  is  a 
slightly  more  complex  relation  involving,  in  addition  to  a 
change  from  one  sensation  to  another,  the  presence  of  an 


6o  English  and  American  Philosophy 

idea  of  the  prior  one.  "In  the  succession  of  ideas  A,  and  B, 
priority  is  not  the  name  of  A,  it  is  the  name  of  that  part  of 
the  compound  process  which  consists  of  knowing  A  as  the  first 
of  the  two" — ^here  the  appeal  to  the  idea  of  succession  to  en- 
able us  to  get  along  without  such  a  specific  relation  is  almost 
undisguised.^ 

8.  The  same  unwillingness  to  accept  relations  as  ultimate 
underlies  the  whole  doctrine  of  the  concept,  or  class  idea.  The 
notion  of  "man"  is  evidently  not  the  sort  of  particular  image, 
or  copy  of  a  sensation,  which  Mill's  philosophy  alone  can  ac- 
cept as  real;  what  are  we  then  to  make  of  it?  A  general  idea, 
Mill  replies,  is  an  aggregation  of  an  indefinite  number  of  indi- 
viduals by  their  association  with  a  particular  name.  For  the 
sake  of  economy,  the  same  name  is  applied  by  us  to  a  number 
of — we  will  say — black  objects.  With  the  gradual  strength- 
ening of  the  association  these  particular  instances  of  black  are 
at  last  called  up  by  the  name  in  such  rapid  succession,  that 
they  appear  commingled;  and  in  this  way  black  turns  from  an 
individual  into  a  general  name.  This  is  clearly  a  tour  de  force, 
quite  unverifiable,  and  far  from  plausible  in  itself;  but  in  any 
case  it  will  hardly  work  apart  from  an  appeal  to  relation.  For 
unless  there  were  already  some  perception  of  resemblance  be- 
tween various  black  objects,  there  would  be  nothing  to  ac- 
count for  the  application  to  them  of  the  same  name;  and  con- 
sequently language,  instead  of  accounting  for  the  universal,  pre- 
supposes it  at  least  in  an  implicit  form. 

As  association  fails  to  be  a  sufficient  explanation  of  the  gen- 
eral idea,  so  does  it  also  in  the  case  of  memory.  To  our  natural 
thought,  memory  appears  clearly  to  involve  an  immediate  ref- 
erence to  an  actual  past  which  lies  outside  any  experience  now 
existing — an  analysis  which  Mill's  sole  reliance  on  association 
makes  it  impossible  for  him  to  accept.  Such  a  transcendence, 
therefore,  he  is  bound  to  resolve  into  a  group  of  associated 

^Analysis  of  the  Phenomena  of  the  Human  Mind,  Chap.  XIV,  Sec. 
II,  pp.  10-22,  79-82. 


James  Mill  6i 

images.  Accordingly  memory  is  made  to  consist  in  a  present 
sensation  or  idea — the  remembering  self — which  calls  up  by 
association,  so  rapidly  that  they  run  as  it  were  into  a  single 
point  of  consciousness,  the  various  intermediate  stages  in  a 
series  at  the  other  end  of  which  is  the  experience  remembered 
— the  past  self, — memory  thus  standing  as  a  complex  idea 
made  up  of  these  two  selves  and  of  the  intermediate  states 
of  consciousness.  Now  here  we  have,  to  be  sure,  all  the  constit- 
uent ideas  present  in  experience  together,  or  very  nearly  to- 
gether; but  it  seems  to  have  done  us  not  much  good  in  the 
way  of  accounting  for  the  knowledge  of  a  real  past.  For 
if  a  present  revived  image  does  not  get  us  beyond  itself,  no 
more  does  a  present  group  of  images  coalescing  in  a  compound. 
The  whole  verisimilitude  of  the  theory  results  from  illicitly 
presupposing  that  this  revived  chain  of  images  loses  its  mere 
status  of  present  existence,  and  informs  us  that  it  is  a  revival 
of  an  actual  past  now  lying  beyond  any  possible  experiences 
of  ours ;  and  this  is  just  the  thing  we  set  out  to  explain. 

9.  In  the  case  of  memory,  then,  we  are  already  in  contact 
with  a  fact  of  consciousness  which  it  is  difficult  to  reduce  to  the 
mere  passive  presence  of  conscious  content,  and  where  the 
reference  to  an  active  belie j  seems  necessary  in  order  to  fill 
out  the  analysis  of  our  experience.  Belief  has,  accordingly,  also 
to  be  analyzed  into  sensation  or  association.  Now  belief,  ac- 
cording to  Mill,  is  in  the  first  instance  nothing  but  the  pres- 
ence of  sensation;  to  have  a  sensation,  and  to  believe  that  we 
have  it,  are  indistinguishable.  Even  of  belief  in  a  present  fact 
of  consciousness  this  is  a  doubtful  thesis;  belief  is  a  case 
of  judgment,  and  is  not  properly  to  be  identified  with  the 
mere  felt  sense  of  realness.  But  in  any  case  we  cannot  stop 
with  such  a  definition.  It  would  lead  us  to  the  conclusion  that 
an  idea  has  only  to  be  present  in  the  mind  to  be  believed ;  and 
as  Mill  does  not  allow  that  there  is  any  reality  for  us  that 
is  not  so  present,  this  would  leave  no  room  for  unbelief,  though 
it  is  easy  to  imagine  a  thing  without  believing  it. 


62  English  and  American  Philosophy 

In  the  endeavor  to  explain  this  difference  between  belief 
and  imagination,  and  at  the  same  time  to  take  some  account 
of  the  normal  function  of  belief  in  appearing  to  carry  us 
beyond  a  mere  present  state  of  consciousness,  Mill  appeals 
again  to  the  law  of  association;  belief,  namely,  is  a  strong  as- 
sociation, as  imagination  is  a  relatively  weak  one.  But  the  at- 
tempt to  dispense  with  the  distinctive  character  of  belief  is 
successful  for  neither  purpose.  At  best  association  can,  on 
Mill's  terms,  only  account  for  what  we  shall  believe,  and,  pos- 
sibly, for  "necessity"  or  permanence  in  belief;  to  explain  the 
believing  attitude  itself,  we  still  have  nothing  to  fall  back 
on  except  the  former  identification  of  belief  with  the  existence 
of  a  mental  content.  And  then  it  makes  no  difference  whether 
an  image  is  brought  into  the  mind  by  a  strong  association  or 
a  weak  one;  so  long  as  it  is  there,  no  reason  appears  why  we 
should  not  believe  it.  Nor,  in  the  second  place,  will  associa- 
tion take  us  outside  the  bare  associated  ideas  as  present  facts 
of  consciousness;  while  even  if  we  agree  with  Mill  that  belief 
in  an  external  object  means  only  the  assurance  that  under  cer- 
tain conditions  I  have  received,  and  will  receive  again,  the 
group  of  sensations  which  constitute  the  object,  we  already, 
in  memory  and  in  anticipation,  are  presupposing  a  belief  in 
what  lies  beyond  the  range  of  existent  mental  content.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  men  actually  mean  more  than  this  by  the  exist- 
ence of  an  object,  as  Mill's  own  language  cannot  avoid  imply- 
ing. When  he  tells  us  for  example  that  belief  in  the  existence 
of  an  object  means  that  if  there  be  sentient  organs,  at  such  a 
time  and  place,  there  will  be  such  and  such  sensations,  his  re- 
duction of  the  universe  to  sensations  has  already  been  left  far 
behind ;  if  I  can  presuppose  myself  as  a  physical  organism  mov- 
ing about  m  a  spatial  world,  the  existence  of  such  a  world  of 
course  no  longer  is  in  question.  Mill  shifts  back  and  forth 
between  the  two  incompatible  notions — that  objects  are  only 
a  certain  number  of  sensations  regarded  as  in  a  particular  state 
of  combination,  and  that  this  order  of  sensations  is  itself  de- 


James  Mill  63 

rived  from  objects  in  nature.  But  in  either  case,  once  more, 
the  fact  of  a  belief  in  something  not  now  present  as  an  experi- 
ence is  there  to  be  explained. 

10.  It  is  worth  while  noticing  again,  before  leaving  Mill, 
that  the  association  doctrine  has  its  chief  meaning  and  im- 
portance for  the  Utilitarians  not  as  a  psychological  theory,  but 
for  its  practical  consequences.  It  was  in  the  first  place  a  weapon 
to  be  used  against  the  rival  school  of  intuitionalism.  "The 
notion,"  says  John  Stuart  Mill,  "that  truths  external  to  the 
mind  may  be  known  by  intuition  or  consciousness,  independ- 
ently of  observation  or  experience,  is,  I  am  persuaded,  in  these 
times  the  great  intellectual  support  of  false  doctrines  and  bad 
institutions.  By  the  aid  of  this  theory  every  inveterate  belief 
and  every  intense  feeling  of  which  the  origin  is  not  remembered 
is  enabled  to  dispense  with  the  obligation  of  justifying  itself  by 
reason,  and  is  erected  into  its  own  all-sufficient  voucher  and 
justification.  There  never  was  such  an  instrument  devised  for 
consecrating  all  deep-seated  prejudices."  To  show  that  all 
such  beliefs  are  capable  of  being  reduced  to  particular  con- 
nections of  ideas,  and  have  therefore  in  them  nothing  sacred 
or  compelling,  is  the  first  service  that  the  association  philosophy 
conceived  itself  to  be  performing.  But  besides  this  negative 
value,  the  doctrine  has  another  and  more  positive  one.  If 
early  association  can  produce  the  intense  conviction  which  we 
now  observe  in  undesirable  beliefs,  then,  if  rightly  controlled, 
it  might  be  equally  effective  in  leading  to  a  more  salutary 
issue.  It  has  very  generally  been  objected  to  schemes  of  social 
regeneration  that  they  may  be  ideally  desirable,  but  that  they 
are  impracticable  so  long  as  human  nature  remains  what  it  is. 
Very  well,  the  Utilitarian  might  reply;  but  what  is  human 
nature?  A  complex  of  particular  associations  of  ideas.  But 
these  you  can  easily  conceive  changed.  Accordingly  the  as- 
sociation theory  points  to  one  ultimate  panacea  for  human 
ills — Education.  Education  properly  conducted  is  capable  of 
almost  anything;  and  society  has  therefore  in  its  own  hands 


64  English  and  American  Philosophy 

the  power  of  creating  the  social  material  to  make  possible 
its  ideals  of  social  justice. 

II.  It  is  easy  to  understand  that  the  Utilitarian  type  of 
mind  had  no  great  use  for  religion.  Of  historical  religion  it 
unfortunately  is  true  that  too  often  it  has  been  exploited  in 
the  interests  of  oppression;  and  even  when  not  consciously  so 
used,  its  tendency  appeared  to  the  Utilitarians  to  be  in  this 
direction.  It  exalts  the  virtues  of  obedience,  and  of  a  patient 
endurance  of  evils  as  the  will  of  God,  rather  than  the  critical 
and  militant  spirit  with  which  Utilitarianism  was  identified. 
"My  father's  rejection  of  all  that  is  called  religious  belief," 
J.  S.  Mill  writes  in  his  Autobiography,  "was  not,  as  one  might 
suppose,  primarily  a  matter  of  logic  and  evidence.  His  aversion 
to  religion  was  of  the  same  kind  with  that  of  Lucretius;  he  re- 
garded it  with  the  feelings  due  not  to  a  mere  mental  delusion, 
but  to  a  great  moral  evil.  He  looked  upon  it  as  the  greatest 
enemy  of  morality,  first  by  setting  up  fictitious  excellencies — 
belief  in  creeds,  devotional  feelings,  and  ceremonies,  not  con- 
nected with  the  good  of  human  kind, — and  causing  them  to 
be  accepted  for  genuine  virtues;  but  above  all  by  radically 
vitiating  the  standard  of  morals,  making  it  consist  in  doing  the 
will  of  a  Being  on  whom  it  lavishes  indeed  all  the  phrases  of 
adulation,  but  whom  in  sober  truth  it  depicts  as  eminently 
hateful.  I  have  a  hundred  times  heard  him  say  that  all  ages 
and  nations  have  represented  their  Gods  as  wicked  in  a  con- 
stantly increasing  progression,  that  mankind  have  gone  on 
adding  trait  after  trait  till  they  reached  the  most  perfect  con- 
ception of  wickedness  which  the  human  mind  can  devise,  and 
have  called  this  God  and  prostrated  themselves  before  it." 

§  2.  John  Stuart  Mill 

I.  John  Stuart  Mill,  the  oldest  son  of  James  Mill,  is,  all 
things  considered,  the  most  interesting  product  of  the  Utili- 
tarian movement.     He  is  interesting  alike  for  the  voluntary 


/.  5.  Mill  6s 

and  for  the  involuntary  part  he  played  in  it;  the  theory  that 
a  child  can  be  trained  to  be  that  which  his  teachers  wish  him 
to  be  has  seldom  had  so  searching  a  test.  Mill  emerged 
a  highly  serious  and,  as  he  himself  confessed,  even  priggish 
young  man,  with  his  vitality  unduly  drained,  but  with  a  fund 
of  knowledge  that  put  him  years  ahead  of  his  contemporaries, 
and  a  mind  that  worked  with  extraordinary  precision  as  a 
logical  machine.  He  took  his  place  almost  at  once  in  the  radical 
movement  as  a  worthy  successor  of  his  father. 

Mill  however  was  hardly  embarked  upon  his  career  when 
he  was  called  upon  to  undergo  an  experience  that  left  lasting 
effects  on  his  intellectual  character.  The  crisis — it  might  very 
well  be  called  his  conversion — occurred  when  he  was  about 
twenty  years  old.  In  a  condition  of  nervous  exhaustion  the 
zest  of  life  suddenly  left  him,  and  the  humanitarian  ends  in 
whose  service  he  was  enlisted  lost  their  charm;  and  while  in 
this  mood  it  occurred  to  him  to  question  the  basis  of  the  phi- 
losophy which  he  had  hitherto  accepted  on  trust.  He  now 
saw,  or  thought  he  saw,  that  the  very  truth  of  the  association 
theory  was  likely  to  jeopardize  the  practical  consequences  which 
alone  made  it  valuable.  The  whole  hope  of  the  world  lay  in 
building  up  opinions  and  interests  through  association;  but  on 
the  other  hand  the  habit  of  analysis  which  constituted  the 
method  of  Utilitarianism  was  all  the  while  tending  to  undo  the 
very  ties  it  was  most  desirable  to  strengthen.  To  be  sure,  con- 
nections of  ideas  will  not  be  affected  if  they  are  natural,  and 
not  external  and  artificial;  but  what  are  these  natural  con- 
nections according  to  the  Utilitarians?  Primarily  the  organic 
and  physical  ones;  and  of  the  entire  insufficiency  of  these  to 
make  life  really  desirable  Mill  had  full  conviction.  To  exalt 
them  alone  to  a  place  of  security  was  to  reduce  life  to  the  mere 
exercise  of  a  selfish  and  uninspired  prudence,  and  to  under- 
mine all  the  nobler  feelings  and  virtues. 

Gradually  the  power  of  feeling  and  of  enjoyment  returned  to 
Mill;  but  the  experience  had  had  the  effect  of  very  notably 


66  English  and  American  Philosophy 

enlarging  his  sympathies,  especially  in  the  way  of  opening  his 
eyes  to  the  value  of  a  more  inner  and  ideal  culture  than  Ben- 
tham's  narrow  and  prosaic  scheme  of  life  allowed  for.  The 
reading  of  Wordsworth  had  proved  his  best  medicine  during 
the  crisis;  and  Wordsworth  had  shown  him  that  feelings  have 
an  importance  which  cannot  be  ignored  in  the  interests  of  an 
unimpassioned  exercise  of  the  intellect,  that  they  are  rooted 
in  the  natural  man,  and  supply  just  the  perennial  source  of 
happiness  which  scientific  analysis  cannot  destroy.  And  this 
deeper  sense  of  spiritual  values  which  Mill  brought  to  the  ra- 
tionalistic logic  of  the  older  Utilitarians  gives  him  a  special 
significance,  as  a  connecting  link  between  the  earlier  and  the 
later  parts  of  the  century.  Mill's  type  of  mind  always  retained 
indeed  peculiarities  that  lessen  the  range  of  its  appeal.  He  is 
lacking  in  expansiveness  and  animal  spirits,  in  obvious  en- 
thusiasms, and,  in  general,  in  the  qualities  that  strike  forcibly 
the  popular  imagination.  Habitually  he  is  inclined  to  take 
things  with  a  degree  of  seriousness  that  is  slightly  overstrained, 
and  to  subordinate  too  much  the  normal  interests  of  living 
to  the  demands  of  the  reforming  spirit.  But  with  this  lack 
of  emotional  impressiveness  is  connected,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  special  merit  to  which  he  can  lay  claim.  An  ingrained  fair- 
mindedness  and  reasonableness,  a  preference  for  clear  think- 
ing over  rhetoric,  a  respect  for  qualified  statements  as  against 
extreme  and  one-sided  ones,  and  an  impersonal  desire  to  get  at 
the  precise  fact,  and  to  recognize  all  the  difficulties  in  the  way 
before  taking  sides,  while  it  is  not  a  showy  or  a  widely  popular 
state  of  mind,  has  its  decided  merits.  Mill  was  aware  of  the 
specialized  character  of  his  own  gifts,  as  appears  in  his  letters  to 
Carlyle  in  particular.  He  is  rather  fitted  to  be  a  logical  ex- 
pounder than  an  artist;  and  it  is  only  in  the  hands  of  the 
artist  and  the  seer  that  truth  becomes  impressive,  and  a  liv- 
ing principle  of  action.  But  he  consoles  himself  with  the 
thought  that  there  is  nevertheless  a  useful  function  left  for 
one  who  shall  translate  the  mystical  insight  of  others  into  the 


/.  5'.  Mill  67 

language  of  argument  and  logic,  and  thus  extend  the  range  of 
its  appeal. 

2.  Although  they  are  not  logically  the  most  fundamental,  it 
will  be  convenient  in  considering  Mill  to  start  from  the  social 
and  industrial  interests  that  more  and  more  came  to  occupy 
his  attention.  Back  of  many  of  the  aspects  of  the  social  prob- 
lem in  the  nineteenth  century,  lies  a  fundamental  conflict  in 
point  of  view.  Broadly  speaking,  it  is  the  difference  between 
the  man  who  exalts  the  part  which  organized  society,  or  the 
state,  is  to  play  in  social  regeneration,  and  the  one  who  thinks 
that  the  state  always  muddles  things  when  it  interferes,  and 
who  looks  for  the  best  results  therefore  from  a  policy  which 
allows  each  individual  to  work  out  his  own  salvation  xmder 
conditions  of  free  competition.  Now  the  second,  or  laissez- 
faire  attitude,  gets  a  special  theoretical  justification  in  the 
political  economy  which  the  Utilitarians  adopted  as  orthodox. 
Adam  Smith  had  already,  in  his  Wealth  of  Nations,  pointed 
out  the  fallacies  imderlying  the  common  assumption  that  na- 
tional prosperity  is  a  thing  that  governments  can  create  by 
arbitrary  interferences  with  the  processes  of  trade.  Such 
a  doctrine  the  Utilitarians  were  prepared  to  receive  even  apart 
from  the  persuasiveness  of  Smith's  argument.  Their  experience 
as  reformers  naturally  would  make  them  suspicious  of  an 
agency  capable  of  going  wrong  in  such  a  multiplicity  of  ways, 
and  they  were  disposed  accordingly  to  restrict  the  functions 
of  the  state;  a  fear  of  power  in  the  hands  of  rulers  was  in- 
deed the  starting  point  of  their  whole  political  creed.  Theo- 
retically also  there  is  a  presumption  against  state  interfer- 
ence; as  a  punishing  agency — and  the  sanction  of  govern- 
ment is  primarily  its  command  of  penalties — the  state  makes 
use  of  pain,  and  pain  in  the  Utilitarian  philosophy  is  always 
an  evil.  It  may  be  necessary  for  other  ends,  but  it  is  a 
necessary  evil;  and  so  the  more  we  can  eliminate  it  the  better. 

Limited  to  the  field  of  industrial  and  commercial  enterprise, 
the  laissez-faire  doctrine  may  conceivably  be  true.     If  it  is 


68         English  and  American  Philosophy 

a  question  how  to  amass  the  greatest  amount  of  material 
wealth,  possibly  the  best  way  may  be  to  leave  every  avenue 
open,  and  let  the  best  man  win.  But  there  is  nothing  in  the 
nature  of  the  case  to  prevent  such  a  result,  even  if  it  came 
about,  from  being  coincident  with  a  pronounced  poverty  in 
many  elements  that  contribute  to  the  real  and  substantial 
happiness  of  a  nation.  Great  wealth  need  not  mean  equitably 
distributed  wealth.  It  may  be  consistent  with  a  great  mass  of 
suffering,  with  hard  and  grinding  conditions  of  labor,  with 
the  lowering  of  ethical  ideals  and  a  substitution  of  the  morals 
of  an  unfeeling  and  selfish  competition.  For  the  Utilitarians, 
however,  inclined  always  to  press  their  logic  to  an  extreme,  and 
naturally  deficient  in  a  spontaneous  human  sympathy,  the 
laissez-faire  philosophy  seemed  to  be  the  last  word  in  the 
solution  of  the  industrial  problem.  And  consequently  when 
the  center  of  the  problem  shifted  from  the  middle  class  to 
the  worker,  the  orthodox  political  economy  crystallized  into 
a  form  which  stood  in  the  way  of  needed  social  changes,  and 
was  used  to  bolster  up  industrial  oppression  and  injustice 
as  real  as  the  political  injustice  against  which  the  party  had 
been  enlisted.  Even  so  elementary  a  principle  of  social  good 
as  the  regulation  of  the  labor  of  children  and  of  women  had 
to  fight  the  economists  for  its  recognition.  There  was  not  on 
the  whole  any  hostility  to  the  working  classes;  on  the  con- 
trary, the  Utilitarians  honestly  were  interested  in  the  good  of 
all.  It  was  assumed  that  prosperity  would  filter  down  auto- 
matically to  the  lower  orders,  who  could  look  for  any  sub- 
stantial benefit  only  to  the  class  above  them.  James  Mill, 
for  example,  takes  for  granted  that  the  middle  class  is  self- 
evidently  the  natural  leader  and  benefactor  of  the  working- 
man;  and  he  deplores  the  sad  case  of  the  inhabitants  of 
manufacturing  communities  with  whose  "afflictions  there  is 
no  virtuous  family  of  the  middle  rank  to  sympathize,  and  whose 
children  have  no  good  example  of  such  a  family  to  see  and 
admire."     Nevertheless  there  was  among  the  economists  an 


/.  5.  Mill  69 

unfortunate  appearance,  at  least,  of  a  lack  of  sympathy  for 
the  aspirations  of  the  laborer  himself,  which  the  temper  of  the 
typical  Utilitarian  was  not  calculated  to  remove. 

And  meanwhile  several  of  the  most  distinctive  doctrines  of 
the  new  school  might  well  appear  devised  of  set  purpose  to 
take  away  from  the  laborer  any  hope  of  a  real  and  permanent 
advance.  There  was  first  the  famous  doctrine  connected  with 
the  name  of  Malthus.  Malthus  had  pointed  out  that  progress 
is  conditioned  by  a  commonplace  but  very  important  physical 
and  economic  law.  Food  products  increase  at  a  rate  less  rapid 
than  the  natural  increase  of  population.  The  result  is  that 
if  there  were  nothing  to  hinder,  the  race  would  soon  outgrow 
its  ability  to  secure  maintenance,  and  universal  distress  would 
follow.  What  has  in  the  past  prevented  this  scarcity  is  the 
very  state  of  affairs  that  the  reformers  were  trying  to  change. 
War,  vice,  pestilence  and  disease  have  cut  down  the  natural 
increase,  and  so  kept  the  race  from  starvation;  but  in  pro- 
portion as  these  checks  are  abolished  the  danger  grows. 

The  consequences  that  Malthus  himself  drew  from  his 
Law  of  Population  are  not  wholly  unambiguous.  Certainly 
a  natural  impression  that  one  is  likely  to  get  from  his  first 
statement  of  it,  is  that  poverty  and  its  attendant  evils  are 
irremediable,  and  that  "from  the  inevitable  laws  of  our  nature 
some  human  beings  must  suffer  from  want'^ — those  unhappy 
persons  "who  in  the  great  lottery  of  life  have  drawn  a  blank." 
In  a  later  edition  he  shows  himself  less  obtuse  to  the  case  that 
can  be  made  out  for  the  humanitarians,  and  leaves  a  not  un- 
favorable impression  of  a  tempered  goodness  of  heart  well 
under  the  control  of  the  intellect.  To  moral  restraints  he 
comes  to  assign  larger  possibilities  in  the  way  of  modifying  the 
law  than  had  at  first  appeared,  even  if  he  does  not  grow  en- 
thusiastic over  the  prospect.  Indeed  if  it  be  so — and  his 
success  in  bringing  this  home  to  men's  minds  is  Malthus* 
most  solid  claim  to  remembrance — that  progress  is  throughout 
dependent  on  the  material  foundations  of  life,  the  recognition 


yo         English  and  American  Philosophy 

of  the  law  may  even  be  a  message  of  encouragement;  as  Mill 
points  out,  if  we  once  see  where  the  responsibility  lies  for  the 
slowness  of  our  progress  in  the  past,  we  are  in  a  better  posi- 
tion to  supply  the  remedy.  But  nevertheless  the  first  effect  of 
the  doctrine,  particularly  in  the  mouth  of  one  who  has  more 
confidence  in  the  compelling  power  of  the  law  than  in  the 
chance  that  men  will  show  enough  intelligence  to  evade  it, 
will  naturally  be  to  chill  the  ardor  of  the  enthusiast  for 
progress. 

The  appearance  of  hostility  to  the  interests  of  the  working 
class  was  increased  by  the  application  of  Malthusianism  to 
the  special  problem  of  the  distribution  of  wealth.  The  eco- 
nomic laws  which  under  free  competition  govern  the  distribution 
of  the  proceeds  of  industry  in  its  various  forms,  and  which 
were  first  formulated  by  David  Ricardo,  were  very  generally 
interpreted  in  a  way  which  made  them  practically  a  demon- 
stration of  the  impossibility  of  any  large  benefiting  of  con- 
ditions. The  so-called  wage-fund  theory,  as  commonly  under- 
stood, amounted  to  saying  that  the  amount  of  capital  avail- 
able for  the  payment  of  wages  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes  a 
fixed  sum,  and  that  consequently  the  power  to  increase  wages 
is  strictly  limited.  Really  the  only  feasible  way  is  by  lessen- 
ing the  number  of  individuals  among  whom  the  division  is  to 
be  made.  But  here  Malthus^  doctrine  comes  in  again.  Sup- 
pose for  any  reason  the  number  of  workmen  is  decreased,  and 
wages  rise.  Prosperity  will  remove  the  bars  to  over-population. 
Working  men  will  marry  earlier,  and  have  larger  families; 
and  so  inevitably  their  numbers  will  increase,  and  wages  will 
once  more  fall.  Of  course  the  economists  recognized  that  this 
simplified  the  situation  somewhat  unduly;  still  there  was 
real  ground  for  the  feeling  that,  so  far  as  it  lay  in  the  power 
of  their  science,  they  were  sentencing  the  workers  as  a  class 
to  perpetual  poverty,  and  reprehending  as  treason  to  the  laws 
of  nature  their  efforts  to  escape. 

.S.     In  connection  with  his  treatment  of  the  industrial  and 


/.  5^.  Mill  71 

economic  problem,  accordingly,  Mill's  wider  human  sympathy 
had  a  large  opportunity  to  make  itself  felt.  His  starting  point 
is  still  very  definitely  from  individualism;  but  it  is  an  indi- 
vidualism which  shows  a  sense  for  the  concrete  realities  of 
men's  lives  that  is  lacking  in  the  earlier  Utilitarians.  Liberty 
for  them  had  meant,  primarily,  either  the  liberty  to  exercise 
the  formal  right  of  free  and  equal  citizenship,  or  the  liberty 
to  conduct  one's  business  as  one  pleased;  and  in  both  cases 
there  were  implicit  certain  consequences  not  entirely  favor- 
able to  the  concrete  freedom  of  the  common  man.  The  ten- 
dency of  laissez-faire,  it  has  appeared,  was  more  immediately 
to  the  advantage  of  the  few  than  of  the  many;  and  even  Ben- 
tham's  Utilitarianism  does  not  point  to  an  unambiguous  issue. 
It  is  a  question  whether  his  theory  of  the  law  as  a  school- 
master placed  over  men  to  bring  their  natural  selfishness  into 
line  with  ideals  of  social  welfare — provided  the  Utilitarian 
philosopher  has  the  say  as  to  what  these  ideals  shall  be — 
does  not  have  in  it  a  leaning  toward  paternalism;  in  more  re- 
cent times,  the  greatest  happiness  principle  has  indeed  been 
widely  utilized  to  give  "society"  an  autocratic  power.  And 
with  that  sense  of  the  worth  of  liberty  as  a  fundamental  con- 
dition of  human  good  which  gets  historical  expression  in  the 
theory  of  "natural  rights,"  Bentham  was  wholly  out  of  sym- 
pathy. With  Mill,  on  the  other  hand,  liberty  is  first  of  all 
an  intimate  and  personal  value.  "To  me  it  seems,"  he 
writes  in  his  Diary,  "that  nothing  can  be  so  alien  and  (to 
coin  a  word)  antipathetic  to  the  modern  mind  as  Goethe's 
ideal  of  life.  .  .  .  Not  symmetry,  but  bold,  free  expansion 
in  all  directions  is  demanded  by  the  needs  of  modem  life  and 
the  instincts  of  the  modern  mind."  In  his  Essay  on  Liberty f 
in  particular,  the  importance  of  having  a  character  which  does 
not  take  its  hue  from  prevailing  opinion,  and  of  living  fear- 
lessly to  suit  oneself  rather  than  one's  neighbors,  is  urged  with 
an  enthusiasm  and  eloquence  which  evidently  does  not  get 
its  sole  motivation  from  the  considerations  of  utility  which  he 


^2         English  and  American  Philosophy 

adduces,  and  which  sometimes  even  threatens  to  endanger 
these  latter. 

When,  therefore,  Mill  comes  to  the  economic  problem,  the 
mere  name  of  liberty  does  not  blind  him  to  the  fact  that 
freedom  from  business  restrictions  does  not  necessarily  mean 
freedom  of  life;  and  he  is  prepared  to  modify  individualistic 
claims  substantially  through  a  recognition  that  the  abstract 
form  of  liberty  is  not  a  substitute  for  actual  benefits  received. 
On  the  whole,  accordingly,  he  may  be  counted  as  one  of  the 
protagonists  of  that  broader  conception  of  economic  science 
which  admits  the  bearing  of  an  ideal  of  social  justice  on  the 
law  of  supply  and  demand.  For  Mill,  the  true  end  of  so- 
cial improvement  is  to  "fit  men  for  a  state  of  society  com- 
bining the  greatest  personal  freedom  with  that  just  distribu- 
tion of  the  fruits  of  labor  which  the  present  laws  of  property  do 
not  even  propose  to  aim  at";  and  in  the  interests  of  this  he 
was  led  to  approve  of  a  degree  of  political  interference  with 
industrial  laissez-faire  that  went  much  beyond  the  traditional 
sympathies  of  his  associates.  He  did  not  himself  consider 
this,  however,  as  a  denial  of  Utilitarian  principles,  but  rather 
as  supplementing  them ;  he  would  extend  the  functions  of  gov- 
ernment not  to  restrict,  but  to  enlarge  men's  opportunities. 
The  advocates  of  laissez-faire  had  conceived  the  "perfection 
of  human  society  to  have  been  reached  if  man  could  be  com- 
pelled to  abstain  from  injuring  man,  not  considering  that  men 
need  help  as  well  as  forbearance,  and  that  nature  is  to  the 
greater  number  a  severer  taskmaster  than  man  is  to  man.'* 
So  long  as  men  need  aid,  not  to  bolster  up  incapacity,  but  to 
"enable  them  afterwards  to  help  themselves,"  there  is  no 
theoretical  ground  for  refusing  it.  Again,  law  may  rightly  step 
in  when  the  purpose  is,  not  to  determine  the  practices  of  trade, 
but  to  give  effect  to  a  general  desire  by  guaranteeing  that 
selfish  individuals  shall  not  nullify  it  through  a  cut-throat  com- 
petition. And  law  may  be  necessary,  also,  to  overcome  the 
artificial  advantages  that  accrue  to  excessive  accumulations  of 


/.  S,  Mill  73 

wealth,  and  to  diminish  the  consequent  inequalities  of  op- 
portunity; Mill  is  considerably  in  advance  even  of  present 
day  practice  in  his  acceptance  of  the  right  of  society  to  ap- 
propriate the  unearned  increment,  and  even  to  abolish  private 
property  in  land,  and  in  his  proposals  for  directly  regulating, 
by  an  inheritance  tax  and  otherwise,  the  size  of  private  for- 
tunes. Even  for  socialism  Mill  shows  a  surprising  tolerance 
and  sympathy  when  one  considers  his  intellectual  antecedents, 
though  on  the  whole  he  inclines  to  think  that  changes  less 
radical  will  be  sufficient,  and  more  consistent  with  a  maxi- 
mum amount  of  human  liberty  and  spontaneity.  With  uni- 
versal education,  and  a  due  limitation  of  the  numbers  of  the 
community, — to  Mill  the  Law  of  Population  continues  to  stand 
as  the  most  serious  obstacle  to  the  hopes  of  the  workingman, — 
he  thinks  that  even  under  present  institutions  it  would  be 
possible  in  a  very  short  time  to  eliminate  poverty.  Two  things 
in  particular  he  came  to  regard  as  having  great  hope  for  the 
future,  one  the  enfranchisement  of  women,  a  measure  of 
whose  political  and  social  value  he  had  an  exaggerated  notion, 
and  the  other  the  promotion  of  cooperative  enterprises. 

4.  In  political  theory  also.  Mill  inclines  to  qualify,  in  a  dif- 
ferent direction,  his  original  individualism,  and  so  to  modify 
the  political  radicalism  of  his  predecessors.  Bentham  had 
been  impressed  only  with  the  danger  that  results  from  the 
interference  of  a  ruling  class  with  freedom;  he  had  scarcely 
noticed  that  a  tyranny  of  the  majority  is  also  possible. 
Throughout  his  life  this  worried  Mill  greatly.  In  the  first 
instance  the  reason  seems  to  have  been  due  to  his  positive 
concern  for  individuality,  and  to  a  fear  lest  the  average  man 
should  be  too  ready  to  enforce  average  and  conventional  rules 
of  living.  But  combined  with  this,  and  bulking  much  larger 
in  his  political  results,  there  is  also  the  less  democratic  motive 
of  a  distrust  of  popular  intelligence.  As  a  consequence  of  this, 
he  found  himself  out  of  sympathy  with  Bentham's  interest  in 
devising  expedients  for  subjecting  legislators  to  the  immediate 


74         English  and  American  Philosophy 

wishes  of  their  constituents.  Rather,  the  aim  of  politics  should 
be  to  leave  the  more  competent  to  apply  their  knowledge  to 
the  work  of  government  without  continual  interference,  though 
they  should  be  held  to  strict  accountability  for  results.  Simi- 
larly of  the  electorate:  Mill  was  too  much  impressed  with  the 
dangers  of  democracy  to  fall  in  with  the  imqualified  demand 
for  an  extension  of  the  franchise,  until  by  education  men 
should  become  better  fitted  for  their  political  duties;  and  he 
continued  to  regard  as  desirable  some  scheme  of  plural  voting 
whereby  superior  education  could  receive  the  added  weight 
he  thought  its  due,  though  he  confesses  that  he  sees  no  work- 
able form  that  this  could  take. 

5.  On  more  fundamental  speculative  issues  also,  Mill  stands 
in  a  relation  to  his  predecessors  which  is  a  little  anomalous. 
On  the  whole,  while  he  has  a  much  clearer  appreciation  of  the 
difficulties  to  be  met,  and  is  led  consequently  to  concessions 
here  and  there,  he  conceives  that  he  is  still  holding  to  the 
faith.  But  the  concessions  are  often  just  the  entering  wedge 
that  makes  it  impossible  not  to  go  further;  and  Mill  is  there- 
fore constantly  being  reduced  to  desperate  logical  devices  to 
prevent  a  more  thoroughgoing  break  than  he  is  prepared  to 
accept. 

The  insecurity  of  Mill's  position  may  be  noted  first  in  con- 
nection with  his  ethics.  Mill  brings  to  ethical  speculation 
the  fervor  which  Bentham  lacked,  and  he  brings,  too,  an  explicit 
recognition  of  logical  problems  which  Bentham  had  slighted; 
but  the  result  is  rather  to  complicate  Utilitarian  theory  than 
to  clarify  it.  He  sets  out  in  the  first  place  to  vindicate  Utili- 
tarianism against  the  charge  of  being  a  base  and  materialistic 
creed.  On  the  assumption  of  the  dominant  claims  of  the  uni- 
versal happiness,  the  falsity  of  the  charge  scarcely  needs  prov- 
ing; it  would  be  more  plausible  to  say  that  the  ideal  is  too 
high  for  imperfect  man.  And  when  Mill  goes  on  to  supple- 
ment Bentham's  intellectualism  by  a  glowing  vindication  of 
the  value  of  the  social  feelings,  and  of  an  ideal  nobleness  of  will 


/.  S.  Mill  75 

and  conduct,  as  against  a  mere  calculation  of  external  con- 
sequences, the  result  is  one  in  which  the  most  hostile  critic 
cannot  fail  to  find  an  exceptional  elevation  of  ethical  tone.  But 
in  all  this  Mill  is  constantly  tending  to  lose  sight  of  the  real 
issue.  He  proves  triumphantly  that  Utilitarian  philosophers 
are  far  from  ignoble ;  he  is  less  successful  in  showing  that  they 
have  a  logical  right  to  their  moral  elevation  on  the  psycho- 
logical principles  they  profess.  When  he  turns  to  this  theoreti- 
cal justification,  his  logic,  by  general  consent,  breaks  down  com- 
pletely. His  most  important  innovation  is  his  doctrine  that 
pleasures  differ,  not,  as  Bentham  had  explicitly  held,  in  amount 
only,  but  in  quality  as  well;  and  this  gives  him  a  decided  ad- 
vantage in  repelling  the  charge  that  pleasure-getting  is  an 
unworthy  end  of  conduct.  But  if  some  pleasures  are  pre- 
ferable not  because  they  are  more  pleasant,  but  because  they 
differ  in  kind,  does  not  this  compromise  the  claim  that  pleas- 
antness is  the  sole  test  of  good?  As  a  matter  of  fact  in  the 
actual  use  he  makes  of  the  concept  of  quality,  as  the  direct 
emotional  perception  of  an  essential  ' 'dignity"  in  human  na- 
ture, and  of  the  ignoble  character  of  self-seeking  and  organic 
ends.  Mill  evidently  has  in  mind  something  not  easy  to  reduce 
to  the  mere  desire  for  pleasure.  In  the  theoretical  explanation 
of  his  meaning,  however,  there  is  no  satisfactory  basis  given  for 
this.  A  "higher"  pleasure  is  simply  a  pleasure  which  experts 
who  have  had  experience  of  both  prefer.  Even  granting  the 
doubtful  assumption  that  there  is  any  single  standard  judg- 
ment on  which  all  experts  would  agree,  at  best  the  only  safe 
implication  here  is,  that  for  human  beings  there  are  some  pleas- 
ures which  typically  are,  again,  more  pleasant  than  others,  and 
which  therefore  they  will  as  a  matter  of  fact  choose  when  they 
have  the  requisite  data;  no  reason  appears  why  they  ought 
to  choose  them,  or  why  if  they  fail  to  do  so  they  should  think 
themselves  contemptible  and  blameworthy. 

Equally  conspicuous  is  Mill's  failure  to  make  a  logical  tran- 
sition between  the  thesis  of  psychological  hedonism,  to  the 


76         English  and  American  Philosophy 

effect  that  everyone  necessarily  pursues  his  own  pleasure,  and 
the  standard  of  the  universal  happiness  which  he  is  mainly 
interested  in  enforcing;  indeed  the  failure  is  so  striking  that 
it  has  passed  into  the  text  books  on  logic  as  an  illustration 
of  the  fallacy  known  as  Composition.  The  argument  hinges 
on  the  claim  that  because  each  person's  happiness  is  a  good 
to  that  person^  the  general  happiness  is  a  good  to  the  aggre- 
gate of  all  persons.  Mill  afterwards  explained  that  in  saying 
that  the  general  happiness  is  a  good  to  the  aggregate  of  all 
persons,  he  did  not  mean  that  every  human  being's  happiness 
is  a  good  to  every  other  human  being;  he  only  intended  to 
argue  that  since  A's  happiness  is  a  good,  B's  a  good,  C's 
a  good,  etc.,  the  sum  of  all  these  goods  must  be  a  good.^ 
But  then  the  argument  is  nothing  but  an  exercise  in  language — 
an  objective  generalization  about  the  things  to  which  the 
word  "good"  is  applied;  and  as  such  it  is  no  argument  at  all, 
since  the  real  problem  is  one  of  individual  motivation,  and 
there  is  nothing  to  show  that  everything  to  which  the  logical 
term  applies  has  a  claim  upon  me,  any  more  than  that  every- 
thing which  answers  to  the  definition  of  food  I  shall  want 
to  eat.  Mill  had  indeed  a  practical  solution  of  the  conflict 
between  individual  and  social  good,  in  his  confidence  that, 
through  education,  the  social  sympathies  may  conceivably  be 
so  extended  as  in  the  end  to  identify  a  man's  own  interests  with 
those  of  his  fellows;  but  a  Utopian  prophecy  of  the  future 
is  not  a  sufficient  substitute  for  an  adequate  logical  analysis. 
6.  Mill's  ultimate  metaphysical  beliefs  are  dealt  with  most 
at  length  in  his  Logic,  and  in  the  Examination  of  Sir  William 
Hamilton's  Philosophy.  The  Logic  is  usually  held  to  be,  his 
most  substantial  contribution  to  philosophy.  Logic  in  Eng- 
land had  already,  prior  to  the  appearance  of  Mill's  book,  re- 
ceived an  impetus  in  the  writings  of  Whately,  and,  more 
especially,  in  the  beginnings  of  a  theory  of  induction,  or  sci- 
entific method,  in  the  learned  volumes  of  William  Whewell. 
^Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II,  p.  116. 


/.  S.  Mill  77 

Whewell  had  been  chiefly  impressed  by  the  part  that  hypothe- 
sis plays  in  scientific  inquiry;  and  he  endeavors  to  analyze  the 
peculiar  contribution  that  is  made  by  the  creative  intellect  in 
scientific  discovery.  Briefly,  this  consists  in  applying  to  the 
mere  collection  of  facts  a  unifying  conception  that  shall  serve 
to  bind  these  facts  together;  and  the  discovery  of  the  right 
conception — a  discovery  due  not  to  rule  but  to  native  sa- 
gacity— is  the  great  work  of  scientific  genius.  The  facts  come 
from  sense  experience.  But  the  unifying  ideas  are  from  the 
mind  itself;  and  apart  from  them  we  have  only  empirical  laws 
of  phenomena,  which  are  to  be  sharply  distinguished  from  true 
causal  explanation.  Such  concepts  are  conceived  by  Whewell, 
under  the  influence  of  Kant,  as  general  forms  of  apprehension 
inherent  in  the  mind,  and  possessed  thereby  of  the  necessity 
which  data  of  experience  lack.  Unfortunately  Whewell  mixes 
up  here  what  is  in  some  respects  an  instructive  emphasis  on 
the  role  of  hypothesis  with  a  metaphysics  which  is  of  doubtful 
service  in  a  scientific  inquiry,  even  in  the  hands  of  a  much 
more  competent  metaphysician  than  he  can  claim  to  be. 

Mill,  as  an  empiricist,  takes  of  course  the  opposite  road, 
and  for  him  the  true  end  of  causal  induction  is  to  discover  the 
laws  of  phenomena  themselves.  The  most  original  portion  of 
the  book  is  the  attempt,  along  lines  already  suggested  in  Sir 
John  Herschel's  Discourse  on  the  Study  of  Natural  Philosophy, 
to  formulate  the  inductive  methods  by  which  science  is  en- 
abled to  sift  out  from  the  connections  between  events  those 
"unconditional"  sequences  which  represent  true  causality.  To 
this  task  all  logical  processes  are  subordinate,  and  "formal 
logic"  accordingly  loses  its  exclusive  title  to  the  name;  al- 
though as  an  account  of  the  way  in  which  we  can,  negatively, 
remove  obstacles  to  the  attainment  of  inductive  truth  by 
avoiding  inconsistencies  in  our  thinking,  it  still  performs  an 
important  service.  It  follows  that  the  syllogism  must  be  de- 
posed from  its  central  place  in  logic,  and  its  function  rein- 
terpreted.    The  fundamental  act  of  inference  is  not  a  per- 


78         English  and  American  Philosophy 

ception  of  the  presence  already  of  a  conclusion  in  a  universal 
premise;  it  is  resolvable  into  the  expectation  that,  since  a 
number  of  individuals  are  known  to  possess  a  given  attribute, 
other  individuals  resembling  them  in  certain  further  respects 
will  be  found  to  possess  this  also.  In  other  words,  inference 
is  always  from  particulars  to  particulars.  General  propositions 
are  merely  "registers"  of  such  inferences  already  made,  and 
short  formulae  for  making  more;  the  conclusion  is  not  an 
inference  drawn  from  the  major  premise,  but  an  inference 
drawn  according  to  the  formula  which  the  major  premise  sets 
forth,  the  real  logical  antecedent  or  premise  being  the  particu- 
lar facts  from  which  the  general  proposition  was  collected  by 
induction.  Whether  the  induction  was  validly  performed  is, 
again,  the  business  of  the  inductive  methods  to  determine. 
Instead  of  judgment  being  concerned,  then,  as  had  been  the 
prevailing  opinion  in  logical  theory,  with  the  recognition  of  a 
relation  between  concepts,  or  ideas  in  our  minds,  what  it 
really  asserts  is  a  succession,  coexistence,  or  similitude  between 
things  or  facts. 

7.  The  practical  value  of  Mill's  formulation  of  the  laws  of 
induction  is  largely  independent  of  the  sensationalism  which  he 
had  inherited.  As  a  matter  of  fact  when  he  is  speaking  as  a 
logician  he  commonly  ignores  this,  and  assumes  like  any 
sensible  scientist  that  he  is  dealing  not  with  sensations,  but 
with  a  world  of  external  processes  which  our  ideas  more  or 
less  adequately  construe.  In  the  background  however  there 
always  lurks  the  sensationalistic  idealism  of  his  school;  and 
it  remains  to  ask  whether  he  is  any  more  successful  than  his 
father  in  making  this  consistent  with  the  everyday  belief  which 
we  all  assume  to  be  valid  in  practice. 

Mill's  treatment  of  the  existence  of  a  physical  world,  to 
take  this  first,  is  open  to  the  same  charge  of  logical  confusion 
that  attaches  to  his  innovations  in  ethics;  an  ambiguity  of 
phrase  hides  an  essential  transition  of  thought.    Mill  tries  to 


/.  S.  Mill  79 

avoid  postulating  more  than  sensationalistic  data  as  the  legiti- 
mate objects  of  knowledge,  and  to  escape  at  the  same  time 
the  absurdities  of  solipsism,  by  calling  external  objects,  not 
independent  realities,  but  "permanent  possibilities  of  sensa- 
tion." Strictly  such  a  phrase,  on  the  presuppositions  of  ideal- 
ism with  which  Mill  does  not  break,  can  only  stand  for  the 
experienced  fact  that  sensations  do  reappear  under  regular 
conditions,  so  that  we  can  anticipate  definite  similarities  in  the 
future.  But  insensibly  the  reader  is  led  to  attach  a  more  posi- 
tive and  active  content  to  the  term  "possibility,"  and  to  think 
of  it  as  an  undefined  source  of  new  sensations — that  which 
makes  them  possible — having  an  actual  present  existence  in 
a  form  capable  of  showing  causal  efficiency;  and  it  is  only  this 
second  interpretation  that  at  all  corresponds  to  our  everyday 
beliefs  and  language.  Explicitly  Mill  does  not  commit  himself 
to  any  but  the  former  meaning,  for  which  what  we  call  an  ob- 
ject is  just  a  cluster  of  sensations,  plus  the  anticipated  possi- 
bility of  getting  other  sensations  if  we  go  to  work  the  right  way. 
So  far  as  an  independently  existing  world  goes,  his  explanation 
is  merely  an  account  of  the  manner  in  which  we  come  to  a  be- 
lief in  this — a  belief  which,  as  the  explanation  would  appear 
to  show,  has  no  legitimate  basis  in  fact.  But  in  spite  of  this 
he  continues  to  express  himself  in  these  same  illegitimate  terms, 
as  if  they  were  quite  justified,  whenever  it  is  necessary  to  give 
verisimilitude  to  his  opinions;  in  fact  he  cannot  avoid  this 
even  when  he  makes  the  effort.  Thus  his  explanation  of  the 
way  we  come  to  a  belief  in  other  selves  will  only  work  by  pre- 
supposing that  my  neighbor's  body  is  a  real  physical  object, 
and  not  a  part  of  my  own  psychical  content.^  Mill's  own 
real  working  opinion  apparently  is,  not  that  an  object  means 
no  more  than  a  group  of  sensations,  but  that  a  real  existence 
of  some  sort  is  the  occasion  of  sensations  in  us,  although  there 
is  no  reason  for  supposing  these  to  have  any  likeness  to  their 
^Examination  of  Sir  William  Hamilton's  Philosophy,  Vol.  I,  pp.  255  ff. 


8o         English  and  American  Philosophy 

cause.  It  is  this  whole  conception  of  an  independent  cause, 
however,  and  not  its  knowable  character  simply,  that  his  ex- 
plicit analysis  has  undermined. 

In  the  more  general  problem  with  which  empiricism  has  to 
deal — the  possibility  of  beliefs  that  do  not  arise  from  the 
connection  of  particular  experiences  through  the  laws  of  asso- 
ciation,— Mill's  position  is  also  not  entirely  straightforward. 
In  the  end  he  finds  himself  forced  to  give  up  his  father's  as- 
surance of  the  all-sufficiency  of  association,  and  to  grant  that 
a  few  residual  facts  are  beyond  its  competency  to  explain.  This 
is  at  any  rate  true  of  the  power  of  memory  to  reach  out  into 
the  past,  of  belief  as  an  ultimate  and  unanalyzable  attitude, 
and  of  some  at  least  of  the  simpler  relations;  probably  also 
it  is  true  of  the  unitary  self,  since  the  consciousness  of  a 
string  of  psychical  facts  as  a  unitary  series  cannot  easily,  he 
allows,  be  identified  with  the  mere  separate  items  of  the  series, 
or  with  one  member  of  it  among  others,  but  must  in  some  mys- 
terious way  be  present  to  them  all.  At  this  point  Mill,  after 
admitting  that  in  principle  the  doctrine  breaks  down,  ought 
presumably  to  have  set  about  recasting  the  association  philoso- 
phy; instead  he  thinks  it  enough  to  take  such  facts  as  a  "final 
inexplicability,"  which  it  is  best  to  accept  without  any  theory 
about  them.  And  thereafter  he  leaves  them  on  one  side,  and 
returns  to  his  faith  in  association  as  a  universal  solvent. 

8.  The  most  crucial  problem,  for  Mill,  is  that  of  "neces- 
sary" beliefs;  and  here  he  holds  consistently,  as  against  any 
form  of  intuitionalism,  that  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  these 
to  have  been  acquired  otherwise  than  by  experience — that  is, 
by  the  repetition  of  sensational  data  independently  of  further 
assumptions.  The  "necessity"  of  a  belief  is  due  solely  to  the 
difficulty  we  have  in  breaking  down  an  association  between 
particular  ideas;  we  need  only  suppose  a  connection  to  have 
been  so  frequent  and  undeviating  between  two  ideas  as  to 
make  them  practically  inseparable,  to  have  all  that  is  required 
to  account  for  so-called  necessities  of  thought.    It  follows  that 


/.  5^.  Mill  8i 

any  such  necessity  might  conceivably  be  overborne  by  fresh 
experience.  Mill  accordingly  argues  vigorously  against  the 
criterion  of  "inconceivability"  on  which  some  of  his  contempo- 
raries relied.  There  is  to  begin  with,  as  he  points  out,  an  am- 
biguity in  the  meaning  of  the  term.  Our  inability  to  conceive 
the  contrary  may  have  reference  in  the  first  place  to  a  difficulty 
in  believing  something  that  past  experience  has  seemed  to  dis- 
credit, even  though  we  can  quite  easily  imagine  the  more 
familiar  association  of  ideas  broken  up.  Thus  the  notion  of 
the  antipodes  will  at  first  be  pronounced  inconceivable,  which 
does  not  prevent  a  more  disciplined  mind,  however,  from  ac- 
cepting it  implicitly.  Here  it  is  natural  to  agree  with  Mill  that 
association  plays  the  central  role,  and  that  nothing  in  the 
nature  of  necessity  is  involved.  But  there  is  another  sort  of 
belief  that  offers  more  trouble.  Can  we  agree  also  that  in  such 
judgments  as  "two  and  two  make  four,"  "parallel  lines  can 
never  meet,"  "a  round  square  cannot  exist,"  we  equally  have 
beliefs  that  are  due  to  mere  repetitions  of  experience,  the  ex- 
periences in  these  cases  having  been  so  multitudinous  and  so  in- 
variable that  the  connected  ideas  cannot,  in  the  absence  of  a 
contrary  model,  be  separated  from  one  another  even  in  imagi- 
nation? 

There  seems  no  reason  to  question  the  apparent  fact  that 
conviction  here  is  the  result  of  analysis  rather  than  of  repeti- 
tion, and  that  if  repetition  is  called  for,  it  is  only  to  assure 
us  that  the  analysis  was  correctly  performed.  The  dispute 
turns  largely  on  our  theory  of  conceptual  knowledge.  Take 
as  an  example  the  truth  that  the  angles  of  a  triangle  are  equal 
to  two  right  angles.  If  we  suppose  with  Mill  that  this  is  a 
generalization  from  all  the  particular  triangles  we  have  ex- 
amined, it  follows  indeed  that  the  judgment  falls  short  of  ne- 
cessity; and  not  only  that,  but  in  strictness  it  never  is  quite 
exactly  true,  since  we  have  never  in  our  experience,  probably, 
come  across  a  triangle  formed  of  perfectly  straight  lines.  But  as 
a  "necessary"  truth,  the  judgment  is  intended  to  apply  to 


82         English  and  American  Philosophy 

phenomenal  triangles  only  in  so  far  as  they  approximate  the 
ideal  and  perfect  triangle,  of  which  last  alone  geometry  professes 
to  speak.  Now  since  for  the  sensationalists  an  idea  is  only 
a  psychical  image  representative  of  an  indefinite  number  of 
particular  objects,  our  notion  that  we  can  think  the  "ideal" 
triangle  can  only  be  an  illusion;  and  if  we  can  thus  deal  only 
with  particular  triangles.  Mill's  conclusions  would  seem  to 
follow. 

If,  however,  we  suppose  our  thought,  whatever  may  be  its 
foundation  in  the  image,  to  have  the  power  to  mean,  or  to 
refer  to,  abstract  and  precisely  definable  characters  viewed 
without  reference  to  their  concrete  embodiment,  and  to  de- 
velop out  of  them  new  and  ideal  constructions,  the  possibility 
is  open  that  we  may  be  able,  by  scrutinizing  these  construc- 
tions, to  discover  further  relationships  involved  in  them  which 
are  necessary,  in  the  sense  that  they  always  must  be  there  if 
the  conditions  which  imply  them  are  there.  And  for  this  no 
indefinite  repetition  of  particular  instances  is  required ;  we  can 
be  sure  that  the  angles  of  a  triangle  never  will  be  more  or  less 
than  two  right  angles,  because  the  truth,  though  not  an  actual 
part  of  the  definition,  is  involved  in  what  we  have  defined  a 
triangle  to  be.  It  would  still  remain  so  that  the  particular 
empirical  sequences  in  the  world  do  not  share  in  this  abstract 
necessity  of  relational  implication;  and  since  for  Mill  the  se- 
quences alone  are  real,  the  device  would  not  have  seemed 
to  him  to  meet  his  philosophic  needs.  If  "two  and  two 
make  four"  means  simply  that,  if  we  put  two  pairs  of  objects 
together,  we  shall  on  counting  find  only  four  present,  it  is 
true  that  nothing  but  experience  is  responsible  for  our  not 
expecting  a  fifth  object  mysteriously  to  have  insinuated  itself 
into  the  group.  But  if,  as  Mill  would  have  to  hold,  everything 
in  mathematics  that  goes  beyond  such  empirical  generalizations 
is  a  matter  purely  of  verbal  definition,  and  not  objective  truth 
at  all,  no  explanation  is  available  of  the  success  with  which 
these  "unreal"  truths,  discovered  only  through  the  manipula- 


/.  S.  Mill  83 

tion  of  ideas,  fit  into  and  enable  us  to  anticipate  the  actual 
facts  of  experience. 

9.  One  case  in  particular  of  a  necessary  truth  is  of  special 
importance,  since  it  is  implicated  in  the  logic  of  induction. 
How  do  we  account  for  the  universality  or  unconditionalness 
of  causal  law,  if  a  belief  in  the  uniformity  of  nature  is  wholly 
a  generalization  from  experience?  Mill's  answer  seems  at 
two  points  to  presuppose  the  result  which  he  is  trying  to  ex- 
plain. Causality  is  clearly  one  of  those  beliefs  which,  on  Mill's 
theory,  have  a  compulsion  only  to  be  accounted  for  by  an  ex- 
ceptionally wide  and  uncontradicted  experience;  and  Mill 
accordingly  talks  about  instances  of  causal  connection  as 
having  met  us  every  moment  of  our  lives.  It  is  hard  not  to 
suppose  however  a  confusion  here.  It  is  of  course  true  that  we 
are  surrounded  by  a  countless  number  of  what,  from  the  stand- 
point of  scientific  knowledge  where  the  causal  law  already  is 
assumed,  are  cases  of  causal  happenings;  and  it  also  is  true 
that  from  the  standpoint  of  mere  presuppositionless  experi- 
ence, we  are  surrounded  by  innumerable  facts  of  sequence. 
But  that  all  these  sequences  present  themselves  as  uncondi- 
tional sequences  is  not  true;  far  from  its  being  so  that  for 
our  knowledge  every  event  is  found  to  have  a  cause,  in  the 
majority  of  cases  the  cause  is  overlooked,  and  many  times  we 
fail  to  find  it  even  when  we  seek.  Were  we  not  already  con- 
vinced that  everything  must  needs  have  a  cause,  the  effect  of 
experience  would  be  bewilderment  rather  than  an  unescapable 
association. 

A  similar  begging  of  the  issue  is  to  be  found  in  MilPs 
account  of  the  way  in  which  the  general  law  of  causation  ac- 
quires a  certainty  superior  to  particular  laws,  so  that  in  this 
instance  the  major  premise  of  our  causal  syllogism,  instead 
merely  of  registering  past  inferences,  adds  logical  weight  to  the 
expectation  of  causality  in  the  new  case.  The  reason  is,  that 
a  generalization  that  extends  to  all  the  facts  of  experience  over- 
comes thereby  a  logical  defect  attaching  to  narrower  infer- 


84         English  and  American  Philosophy 

ences.  The  difficulty  with  the  method  of  a  simple  enumeration 
of  instances  for  the  discovery  of  causal  law,  is  that  it  affords 
no  guarantee  that  a  connection,  even  when  it  has  always  been 
found  to  be  present,  may  not  perhaps  be  due  to  chance — to 
accidental  collocations,  or  to  the  accidental  absence  of  coun- 
teracting agencies.  And  if  we  suppose  the  range  of  a  generaliza- 
tion so  widely  extended  that  there  is  no  time  or  place  or 
combination  of  circumstances  but  must  afford  an  example  either 
of  its  truth  or  falsity,  then  its  truth  cannot  be  contingent  on 
any  collocations  save  such  as  exist  at  all  times  and  places,  nor 
can  it  be  frustrated  by  any  counteracting  agencies  imless 
by  such  as  never  actually  occur.  But  the  logical  theory  on 
which  such  an  argument  rests  merely  gives  us  ground  for  be- 
lieving that,  if  the  world  is  causally  organized,  we  are  likely 
to  have  picked  the  true  cause  rather  than  a  chance  coincidence; 
as  Mill  himself  puts  it,  we  are  left  with  the  alternative  between 
the  right  cause,  and  no  cause  at  all.  This  ought  no  doubt  to 
be  sufficient  if  we  have  already  granted  the  causal  assumption; 
but  Mill  overlooks  the  fact  that  it  is  precisely  a  ground  for 
the  preference  of  some  cause  to  no  cause  at  all  that  he  is 
called  upon  to  show. 

Meanwhile  in  estimating  Mill's  distrust  of  necessary  prin- 
ciples, it  is  only  fair  to  remember  once  more  that  he  is  inter- 
ested not  only  in  a  metaphysics,  but  in  the  worth  of  a  certain 
practical  attitude.  And  so  long  as  it  is  necessary  to  break  down 
dogmatism  and  prejudice,  there  is  an  advantage  in  calling 
attention  to  the  fact  that  our  mere  ease  or  difficulty  in  think- 
ing a  thing  is  not  bound  to  legislate  for  the  universe.  When 
however  this  purpose  is  accomplished,  it  seems  possible  also 
to  go  too  far  in  a  distrust  of  human  nature  and  the  reach 
of  human  thought ;  we  are  not  called  upon  to  be  forever  telling 
ourselves  that  our  beliefs  conceivably  may  all  be  wrong.  What 
we  are  really  interested  in  is  the  stability  of  belief,  and  not  its 
possession  of  a  special  logical  character  called  necessity.  On 
the  assumption  that  the  right  to  believe  does  rest  upon  logical 


/.  S.  Mill  85 

necessity,  the  disproof  of  necessity  must  of  course  undermine 
our  assurance;  but  this  assumption  is  not  itself  a  necessary  one. 
And  when  we  find  Mill  insisting  that  a  mental  compulsion 
constitutes  no  title  deed  to  the  possession  of  ultimate  truth, 
and  urging  the  absurdity  of  supposing  that  the  "mind  should 
be  blindly  determined  to  represent  truly  the  reality  which  it 
does  not  know,"  it  is  pertinent  to  observe  that  this  "absurdity" 
is  a  literal  description  of  Mill's  own  account  of  memory,  in 
whose  veracity  he  nevertheless  unhesitatingly  confides. 

10.  Mill  himself  seems  in  the  end  to  have  come  to  feel  to 
some  extent  that  empirical  sequences  do  not  have  the  only 
claim  upon  our  tolerance,  and  to  have  relaxed  the  Utilitarian 
attitude  of  hostility  even  to  ultimate  religious  beliefs.^  He 
allows  that  along  with  conceptions  that  have  a  scientific  foun- 
dation, there  are  others  which  appeal  to  us  in  a  different  way; 
and  he  does  not  deny  that  these  last  may  also  have  a  value. 
"I  think,"  he  writes,  "that  as  mankind  improve,  they  will  much 
more  realize  two  independent  mental  provinces,  the  province 
of  belief,  and  the  province  of  imaginary  conjecture;  that  they 
will  become  capable  of  keeping  them  distinct;  and,  while  they 
unite  their  belief  to  the  evidence,  will  think  it  allowable  to 
let  their  imaginative  anticipations  go  forth,  not  carrying  be- 
lief in  their  train,  in  the  direction  in  which  experience  and  study 
of  human  nature  shows  to  be  the  most  improving  to  the  char- 
acter, and  most  exalting  and  consoling  to  the  individual  feel- 
ings." If  no  positive  facts  stand  in  the  way,  Mill  would  thus 
allow  us  at  least  to  play  intellectually  with  any  view  of  things 
that  seems  likely  to  act  as  a  spur  to  the  moral  life.  It  is  not 
that  our  feelings  have  in  theory  any  connection  with  truth;  the 
whole  right  is  based  solely  upon  pragmatic  considerations.  It 
is  a  case  of  looking  on  the  brighter  side  of  things,  the  cultiva- 
tion of  a  cheerful  disposition;  and  it  is  to  be  approved  for  the 
reason  that  cheerfulness  is  better  than  despondency.  A  be- 
lief in  God  may  have  this  value;  the  thought  of  a  higher  co- 

^  Three  Essays  on  Religion. 


86  English  and  American  Philosophy 

worker  in  the  affairs  of  the  universe  tends  to  the  enlarge- 
ment of  the  general  scale  of  the  feelings,  "the  loftier  aspira- 
tions being  no  longer  in  the  same  degree  checked  and  kept 
down  by  a  sense  of  the  insignificance  of  human  life — by  the 
disastrous  feeling  of  'not  worth  while/  "  The  evidence  for  this 
creed,  indeed,  "if  evidence  it  can  be  called,  is  too  shadowy 
and  unsubstantial,  and  the  promises  it  holds  out  too  distant  and 
uncertain,  to  admit  of  its  being  a  permanent  substitute  for 
the  religion  of  humanity."  But  the  two  may  be  held  in  con- 
junction; and  one  is  "at  liberty  to  indulge  the  pleasing  and 
encouraging  thought,  that  its  truth  is  possible." 

The  trouble  with  such  a  position  plainly  is,  that  hope  that 
stops  short  of  anything  that  can  be  called  belief  is  too  little 
substantial  to  wear  well  under  the  stress  of  human  affairs. 
Probably  Mill  had  himself,  in  his  later  years  at  any  rate,  rather 
a  greater  confidence  here  than  his  philosophical  terminology 
would  allow  him  to  express;  indeed  he  seems  definitely  in- 
clined to  hold  that,  in  the  appearance  of  design  in  the  world, 
there  is  positive  evidence  of  a  sort  for  the  existence  of  a  being 
who  may  serve  as  the  God  of  religion.  It  is  perfectly  clear  to 
him  however — and  this  is  his  most  settled  opinion  in  con- 
nection with  the  whole  matter — that  if  this  be  so,  God  must  be 
a  finite  God  with  definite  limitations.  For  the  fact  of  evil  is 
too  omnipresent  in  the  world  of  nature  to  make  possible  the 
belief  in  a  God  who  is  both  benevolent,  and  all-powerful;  "if 
the  Maker  of  the  world  can  all  that  he  wills,  he  wills  misery, 
and  there  is  no  escape  from  the  conclusion." 

§  3.  The  Philosophical  Radicals.     Bain.     Austin. 
J.  F.  Stephen.    Sidgwick 

I.  Of  the  Philosophical  Radicals  who  carried  the  Bentham- 
ite doctrines  into  politics,  George  Grote,  the  historian,  is  the 
only  one  who  can  be  regarded  as  belonging  to  the  history  of 
philosophy;  and  Grote,  while  from  early  youth  he  was  deeply 


George  Grote  87 

interested  in  metaphysics,  and  did  good  work  in  the  historical 
field  in  connection  with  Plato  and  Aristotle,  left  behind  little 
of  importance  apart  from  a  few  posthumous  articles  on  ethics. 
In  these  the  point  most  deserving  of  notice  is  his  elaboration 
of  the  "social"  character  of  moral  obligation.  Society,  in  its 
collective  capacity,  determines  what  sort  of  conduct  it  wants 
from  the  individual,  and  in  the  form  of  authority  imposes  this 
upon  him.  In  return  it  undertakes  also  to  reward  this  social 
subservience  by  an  attitude  of  benevolent  approval  and  pro- 
tection. And  the  social  sentiment  is  a  complex  state  of  mind 
due  to  the  association  of  the  acts  demanded  by  society  with 
the  feelings,  or  social  judgments  of  approval  and  disapproval, 
that  men  come  to  look  for  as  their  natural  due.  This  is  a 
laudable  attempt  to  bridge  the  gap  which  Bentham  had  left 
between  the  individual  and  the  social  judgment;  it  seems 
clear  however  that  it  still  leaves  the  desire  for  personal  benefits 
the  only  real  reason — for  mere  habit  is  not  a  reason — why  a 
man  should,  when  he  thinks  about  it,  hold  himself  bound  to 
postpone  his  own  happiness  to  that  of  the  community  if  the 
two  conflict.  And  in  the  end  indeed  Grote  accepts  the  moral 
supremacy  of  society  as  represented  by  the  collective  opinion 
of  the  majority,  and  the  right  of  society  in  consequence  to 
exact  obedience  from  the  individual,  as  something  so  self- 
evident  to  the  meral  judgment  that  the  philosopher  is  not 
called  upon  to  demonstrate  it. 

2.  In  psychology,  the  tradition  of  James  Mill  was  carried 
on  by  Alexander  Bain.  Bain  represents  the  association  psy- 
chology on  the  point  of  passing  over  into  the  more  modem 
conception  of  the  science,  through  the  explicit  recognition  of 
the  need  for  looking  beyond  empirical  trains  of  sensations  to 
their  physical  and  organic  conditions.  Such  a  recognition  had 
originally  played  a  large  share  in  the  speculations  of  Hartley, 
the  founder  of  associationalism,  but  it  had  centered  about  a 
theory  of  nerve  process  which  friend  and  foe  alike  agreed  in 
declining  to  take  seriously ;  and  with  Hartley's  ITtilitarian  fol- 


88         English  and  American  Philosophy 

lowers,  as  has  appeared,  interest  was  exclusively  directed  to  the 
analysis  of  mental  states.  Some  credit  for  calling  attention  to 
the  physiological  basis  of  mind  belongs  to  the  phrenologists, 
who  in  Great  Britain  were  ably  represented  by  George  Combe; 
but  phrenology  was  too  fully  committed  to  its  peculiar  dogmas 
to  be  in  good  odor  with  scientists  generally. 

Bain's  chief  addition  to  the  machinery  of  sensationalism  is 
his  acceptance  of  a  primitive  spontaneity,  or  activity  of  the 
organism,  originating  in  internal  impulses  independent  of  out- 
ward stimuli.  Bain  declines  indeed  to  go  very  far  in  the 
way  of  admitting  definite  instincts;  mostly  he  thinks  of  this 
activity  as  diffusive  and  vaguely  directed,  and  as  taking  on 
specific  forms  only  through  the  chance  production  of  a  sense 
of  pleasurable  feeling  which  accompanies  heightened  activity, 
and  which  then  detains  and  fixes  the  hitherto  random  move- 
ments. His  recognition  of  activity,  however,  enables  him  to 
throw  new  light  on  many  psychological  matters,  especially  in 
connection  with  the  theory  of  emotion  and  of  volition,  where 
James  Mill  had  been  notably  weak.  A  similar  advantage, 
through  a  clearer  recognition  of  the  part  played  by  the  mus- 
cular feelings  and  the  sense  of  resistance,  might  have  accrued 
to  his  theory  of  perception;  but  he  partly  forfeits  this  advan- 
tage through  his  idealistic  insistence  that  after  all  the  external 
world  is  not  revealed  to  us  as  that  which  resists  our  muscular 
energy,  but  is  no  more  than  the  experienced  feeling  itself,  and 
so  one  psychical  fact  among  others.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  if 
"primitive  spontaneity"  refers  only  to  a  peculiar  kind  of  sensa- 
tion, and  not  to  actual  movements  of  the  physical  organism,  it 
is  robbed  of  all  significant  meaning. 

Two  further  points,  also  connected  with  the  notion  of  ac- 
tivity, deserve  notice  here,  because  of  their  bearing  on  general 
philosophical  problems — the  psychological  account  of  belief, 
and  that  of  our  belief  in  causation  in  particular.  To  begin 
with  the  latter,  Bain  avoids  the  logical  difficulty  present  in 
J.  S.  Mill's  account  of  the  inductive  principle,  by  his  accep- 


Alexander  Bain  89 

tance  of  an  original  spontaneous  tendency  to  assume  that  fa- 
miliar sequences  will  be  repeated — an  assumption  frankly- 
begged,  and  recognized  as  having  only  a  practical  and  not  a 
theoretical  justification.  The  more  general  theory  of  belief  is 
usually  regarded  as  one  of  Bain's  most  original  contributions. 
There  are  however  difficulties  in  determining  precisely  what 
this  theory  is.  It  contains  two  elements  which  do  not  fuse  very 
readily;  and  Bain's  growing  perception  of  this  leads  him  to 
modify  his  original  formulation,  imtil  in  the  end  the  most  dis- 
tinctive feature  of  it  is  refined  away.  Belief  arises.  Bain 
holds,  in  a  situation  in  which  immediate  "spontaneity"  has 
been  displaced  by  hesitation,  and  the  use  of  secondary  means; 
when  any  creature  is  found  performing  an  action,  indifferent 
in  itself,  with  a  view  to  some  end,  and  adhering  to  it,  we  say 
that  the  animal  possesses  confidence,  or  belief,  in  a  certain 
arrangement  of  nature  relevant  to  the  end  he  is  after.^  Now 
this,  in  so  far  as  it  is  unambiguous,  amounts  to  saying  that  be- 
lief is  constituted  by  a  sense  of  confidence  in  the  order  of 
experience.  Its  original  source  is  a  "primitive  credulity,"  or  a 
disposition  to  expect  any  sequence  of  ideas  that  has  once  oc- 
curred to  be  repeated;  and  this  credulity,  in  the  more  de- 
veloped intellectual  life,  continues  as  "belief,"  in  so  far  as 
sequences  have  remained  uncontradicted  by  later  experience. 
Here  the  only  "activity"  involved  is  in  the  flow  of  ideas,  belief 
being  the  unimpeded  anticipation  of  a  coming  idea;  in  other 
words,  it  is  Bain's  account  of  causation  again,  or  of  a  belief 
in  the  uniformity  of  nature.  What  Bain  would  like  to  do,  how- 
ever, is  to  connect  this  also  with  the  actual  physical  action 
which  the  situation  implies,  and  to  find  that  which  distin- 
guishes belief  from  imagination  in  an  "impulse  of  persever- 
ance," or  a  "preparedness  to  act,"  which  is  itself  incipient  ac- 
tion. But  he  was  reluctantly  driven  to  the  conclusion  that 
it  is  impossible  thus  to  reduce  the  actual  content  of  the  believ- 

^  The  Emotions  and  the  Will,  pp.  ^6%  ff.  (ist  Ed.) ;  pp.  %o<,  ff.  (3rd 
Ed.) 


90         English  and  American  Philosophy 

ing  experience  itself  to  the  sense  that  we  are  acting  or  about 
to  act;  and  accordingly  the  theory  tends  to  leave  us  only  with 
the  more  familiar  notion  that  belief  is  what  occasions  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  action  rather  than  identical  with  it,  and  action 
the  test  of  a  genuine  belief  instead  of  its  intrinsic  nature. 

Meanwhile  the  former  of  the  two  accounts  has  a  close  con- 
nection with  another  of  Bain's  doctrines — that  of  "fixed  ideas." 
Rational  action,  or  volition  in  the  proper  sense,  is,  for  Bain, 
action  directed  toward  the  securing  of  pleasure,  or  the  avoid- 
ance of  pain.  But  there  is  also  another  and  non-rational  form 
of  action,  which  previous  Utilitarians  had  not  recognized,  due 
to  the  automatic  tendency  of  ideas  that  hold  possession  of  the 
mind  to  issue  in  appropriate  movements.  And  it  is  this  con- 
ception of  ideo-motor  action  which  suggests  Bain's  most  original 
contribution  to  ethics.  It  has  appeared  that  a  difficulty  ex- 
ists for  hedonism  in  the  need  for  explaining  how  we  come  to 
adopt  other  people's  happiness  as  a  motive,  especially  when 
this  clashes  with  our  own.  The  new  solution  is,  that  in  sym- 
pathy, as  a  source  of  social  action,  we  have  the  most  striking 
example  of  the  Fixed  Idea.  The  thought  of  other  people's 
pains  and  pleasures,  embedded  in  the  mind  through  many 
repeated  forms  of  gregarious  experience,  tends  without  volition 
to  carry  itself  over  into  conduct;  and  it  may  be  so  compelling 
as  to  overbear  the  rational  desire  for  pleasure  of  our  own. 
Bain  might  thereupon  perhaps  have  been  expected  to  tell  us 
that,  since  sympathy  is  irrational,  it  should  be  eliminated  as 
speedily  as  possible  in  favor  of  conscious  volition;  but  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  as  he  proceeds,  it  appears  to  shed  the  charac- 
teristics that  belong  to  fixed  ideas  elsewhere,  and  to  become 
sufficiently  reasonable  to  retain  its  claim  upon  us  even  at  the 
expense  of  that  desire  for  pleasure  which  elsewhere  is  regarded 
as  essential  to  a  rational  motive.  The  best  reconciliation  Bain 
can  suggest  is,  that  at  some  time  in  the  future  society  may 
make  such  arrangements  as  will  repay  the  sacrifices  to  public 
duty  that  often  go  at  present  uncompensated,  and  thus  may 


/.  F,  Stephen  91 

overcome  the  opposition  between  private  and  public  good; 
though  we  are  not  told  why  this  future  possibility  should  be 
allowed  to  have  weight  in  our  judgments  on  conduct  in  the 
meantime. 

3.  Two  further  names  may  perhaps  be  bracketed  together 
here,  though  about  their  proper  classification  some  question 
might  be  raised — John  Austin,  and  Sir  James  Fitzjames 
Stephen.  Philosophically  both  are  good  Utilitarians  in  that 
they  accept  in  ethics  pleasure  as  the  end,  and  utility  as  a 
standard;  but  in  their  ultimate  sympathies  it  is  less  clear  to 
what  extent  they  are  loyal  Benthamites.  Not  only  do  they 
find  in  religion  a  solution  of  certain  theoretical  difficulties  in 
a  manner  that  recalls  Paley  rather  than  Bentham,  but  also  in 
both  the  passion  for  reform  is  to  say  the  least  very  much 
subdued.  Austin's  main  work  is  in  the  field  of  jurisprudence; 
but  he  introduces  this  with  an  account  of  the  ethics  of  utility 
which  has  many  merits  in  the  way  of  clearness  and  logical 
precision.  Obligation  means  for  Austin  nothing  but  the  com- 
mand of  a  superior,  able  to  enforce  his  will  by  rewards  and 
penalties;  and  just  as  legal  duty  therefore  is  identical  with 
the  commands  of  the  political  sovereign,  so  duty  in  the  wider 
sense  presupposes  a  divine  sovereign.  Utility  is  thus  not  the 
ultimate  source  of  morality — this  lies  in  the  will  of  God;  but 
if  God  wills,  as  we  may  suppose  he  does,  the  general  welfare, 
utility  continues  to  serve  as  an  index  by  which  we  can  infer, 
from  the  effects  on  human  happiness,  the  nature  of  the  laws 
which  God  imposes.  These  take  the  shape  of  general  rules, 
whose  dignity  and  universal  character  it  is  unsafe  to  tamper 
with  in  an  attempt  to  apply  calculation  to  particular  cases; 
Austin  inclines  to  think  they  ought  to  be  followed  in  their 
absolute  form,  and  no  exceptions  allowed.  And  for  the  most 
of  our  conduct  we  do  not  even  need  to  have  utility  actually 
in  mind;  it  is  enough  to  follow  geneial  sentiments  of  liking 
and  aversion.  These  sentiments  however  are  not  inscrutable 
and  innate,  as  the  intuitionalists  maintain.    It  is  just  the  dan- 


92         English  and  American  Philosophy 

gerous  consequences  of  the  wrong  act  to  which  originally  dis- 
approval attaches;  and  in  practice  therefore  feeling  is  no  more 
opposed  to  utility,  than  the  rudder  of  a  boat  is  opposed  to  the 
sail,  or  to  the  breeze  which  swells  the  sail.  In  Austin's  po- 
litical speculations  there  is  the  same  strong  emphasis  on  an 
abstract  conception  of  sovereignty,  as  against  the  competing 
doctrine  of  "rights."  Bentham  also,  it  is  true,  had  found  the 
idea  of  natural  rights  obnoxious.  But  it  had  been  mainly 
on  account  of  its  connection  with  unreasoned  forms  of  emo- 
tional bias  which  hamper  the  reformer;  in  Austin  the  motive 
tends  in  the  quite  different  direction  of  a  willingness  to  exalt 
legalism  over  the  spirit  of  liberty. 

4.  The  need  of  appealing  to  religious  sanctions  if  Utili- 
tarianism is  to  hold  its  ground  against  egoistic  hedonism  gets 
also  an  interesting  setting  in  J.  F.  Stephen.  With  Stephen  it  is 
motivated  by  temperamental  antipathies.  To  any  form  of 
effusive  sentiment  he  had  a  strong  aversion,  but  especially  to 
the  sort  of  sentiment  which  in  his  day  was  turning  democracy 
and  social  reform  into  a  religion  of  humanity.  Stephen  was 
himself  of  the  hard-headed,  unenthusiastic,  personally  ambi- 
tious type,  scornful  of  ideals  that  are  not  to  be  attained  by 
strenuous  human  effort  under  actual  working  conditions,  with 
strong  personal  affections  in  a  narrow  field,  a  frank  indiffer- 
ence to  the  remoter  portions  of  mankind,  and  an  honest  hatred 
of  his  enemies.  The  demand  that  we  substitute  for  the  inter- 
ests of  ourselves,  our  friends,  and  our  country,  the  welfare  of 
the  human  race  at  large,  seemed  to  him  a  silly  affectation. 
Even  in  his  earlier  days,  when  he  was  an  orthodox  Christian, 
he  had  slight  afi^nity  with  the  peculiarly  Christian  ideal.  The 
humanitarianism  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  repelled  and  per- 
plexed him;  it  would,  he  declared,  if  lived  up  to,  turn  the 
world  upside  down.  If  therefore  we  ask  whether  we  are  in 
duty  bound  to  go  further  than  the  current  morality  of  the 
man  of  the  worid,  the  answer  is.  Yes,  if  there  is  a  God  and  a 
future  state;  No,  if  there  is  no  God  and  no  future  state.    If 


/.  F,  Stephen  93 

there  is  to  be  any  firm  basis  for  the  ideal  of  the  general  wel- 
fare, it  must  be  found,  not  in  an  impossible  extension  of  hu- 
manitarian sympathy,  but  in  a  "Christianity  founded  on  Hell," 
through  the  belief  in  a  future  life  which  an  omnipotent  God 
makes  use  of  to  enlist  man's  self-interest  in  the  service  of  a 
universal  morality.  Such  a  God  is  not  himself  to  be  regarded 
as  benevolent;  but  his  law,  though  stem  and  inflexible,  is 
noble,  and  excites  a  feeling  of  awful  respect  for  its  author. 

5.  The  ethical  theory  of  the  Utilitarians  has  another  dis- 
tinguished representative  in  Henry  Sidgwick,  though  here  also 
a  question  might  be  raised  about  the  classification.  Sidgwick 
is  indeed  a  professed  opponent  of  sensationalism  and  posi- 
tivism; and  even  in  ethics  he  introduces  modifications  that 
amount  almost  to  a  revolution.  The  nature  of  his  most  im- 
portant book,  the  Methods  of  Ethics,  is  suggested  by  its  title. 
He  proposes  to  examine,  not  primarily  competing  notions  of 
the  ethical  end,  but  the  various  ways  to  be  found  in  the  moral 
consciousness  of  mankind  of  attaining  reasoned  convictions 
about  matters  of  duty.  Of  these  he  distinguishes  three  main 
types — the  calculation  of  consequences  in  terms  of  egoistic 
satisfaction,  immediate  intuition,  and  pleasure  calculation  di- 
rected toward  the  universal  good,  this  last  being  identical  with 
Utilitarianism.  After  a  remarkably  close  and  realistic  ex- 
amination of  the  facts  of  the  ethical  judgment,  the  conclusion 
is  reached  that  none  of  these  methods  is  without  serious  im- 
perfections; and  none  can  in  practice  be  adopted  to  the  en- 
tire exclusion  of  the  others.  Between  the  intuitional  and  the 
Utilitarian  methods,  an  approximate  reconciliation  is  in  prin- 
ciple fairly  simple.  The  judgments  which  express  the  im- 
mediate dictates  of  conscience  everywhere  imply  as  a  matter 
of  fact  a  reference  to  social  happiness  to  support  them,  and 
to  explain  their  limitations  and  qualifications;  while  at  the 
same  time  we  are  accustomed  to  make  explicit  reference  to 
utility  only  in  exceptional  cases,  the  majority  of  our  judgments 
being,  as  the  Utilitarian  may  agree  with  the  intuitionalist,  di- 


94         English  and  American  Philosophy 

rect  and  iinmediated.  Between  egoistic  and  universalistic  he- 
donism, however,  there  is  a  more  serious  lack  of  coincidence. 
Common-sense  morality  recognizes  both  the  claims  of  pru- 
dence and  the  right  to  personal  happiness  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  obligation  to  consult  the  common  good  on  the  other;  and 
there  is  no  method  of  fully  identifying  the  two  demands. 
Morality  is  thus  incapable  of  being  completely  rationalized, 
unless  indeed  we  go  beyond  the  sphere  of  scientific  ethics,  and 
postulate  a  universe  prepared  to  make  up  somehow  to  the  in- 
dividual his  sacrifices  to  duty. 

In  terms  of  the  traditional  problems  of  ethics,  then,  Sidg- 
wick  casts  in  his  lot  on  the  whole  with  the  Benthamite  doctrine 
of  the  general  happiness  as  the  ultimate  good.  But  he  does 
this  with  far  greater  exactness  of  analysis  than  any  of  his  pre- 
decessors; and  as  the  outcome  of  this  analysis  he  makes  two 
modifications  in  particular  which  change  the  whole  complexion 
of  the  theory.  In  the  first  place  he  agrees  with  Butler  that 
pleasure  is  not  necessarily  in  point  of  fact  the  only  thing  at 
which  we  aim,  since  in  many  cases  no  pleasure  would  be  forth- 
coming unless  we  already  had  an  independent  desire  for  certain 
objects  or  activities;  the  only  thing  that  Utilitarianism  need 
claim  is,  that  apart  from  pleasure  nothing  approves  itself  to  re- 
flection as  worth  desiring.  But  also  he  holds  that  an  appeal 
after  all  to  intuition  is  required  even  by  a  hedonistic  theory  of 
pleasure  as  the  Summum  Bonum.  When  a  moralist  calls  pleas- 
ure the  good,  he  means  to  imply,  not  simply  that  we  try  to 
get  pleasure  as  a  matter  of  fact,  but  that  a  maximum  of  pleas- 
ure is  what  as  reasonable  human  beings  we  ought  to  aim  at. 
But  this  "ought"  introduces  a  new  element  over  and  above 
any  appeal  to  facts  of  feeling.  Implied  even  in  the  recognition 
of  the  claims  of  prudence  over  mere  temporary  desire,  this  is 
particularly  apparent  when  we  ask  why  we  should  prefer  the 
universal  happiness.  Sidgwick  finds  the  new  element  in  an 
immediate  deliverance  of  the  rational  consciousness,  based  on 
the  self-evident  perception  that  a  greater  amount  of  good  is 


/.  F.  Stephen  95 

better  than  a  less.  Grant  that  pleasure  is  to  be  accepted  as  a 
good  at  all,  and  a  man  can  see  by  a  direct  intuition  that  he 
ought  not  as  an  impartial  and  rational  being  to  prefer  a  pres- 
ent lesser  good  to  a  future  greater  good,  and  that  he  ought  not 
to  prefer  his  own  lesser  good  to  the  greater  good  of  others. 
It  is  this  intuitive  act  of  reason,  carrying  with  it  a  necessary 
reference  to  obligation,  which  constitutes  the  most  ultimate  fact 
of  the  ethical  consciousness. 


CHAPTER  III 
AUTHORITY  AND  REASON  IN  THEOLOGY 

§  I.    Arnold.     The  Oxford  Movement.    Newman 

I.  While  secularism  was  being  fashioned  into  a  thorough- 
going philosophical  creed  by  the  Utilitarians,  an  intellectual 
ferment  along  very  different  lines  was  taking  place  in  the  world 
of  religious  thought;  and  though  it  is  true  that  the  results  of 
this  for  philosophy  are  meagre,  it  engages  so  large  a  share 
of  the  intellectual  energies  of  a  generation  of  Englishmen,  that 
it  can  hardly  be  left  unnoticed.  There  are  several  distinct 
and  even  sharply  hostile  forms  which  this  theological  renais- 
sance assumes;  but  in  a  general  way  they  have  a  common 
character  even  in  their  diversity.  Their  interest  lies  less  in 
the  quest  for  abstract  rationality  or  truth,  than  in  the  con- 
crete and  the  historical — in  the  institutional  forms  of  the 
Church,  that  is  to  say,  and  the  emotional  realities  of  religious 
experience  as  these  center  about  historic  dogmas.  It  is  by 
anticipating,  somewhat  faintly  to  be  sure,  the  significance  of 
the  historical  outlook,  which  the  rise  of  the  notion  of  develop- 
ment was  later  to  bring  to  the  front,  but  which  the  academic 
philosophies  had  hitherto  ignored,  that  the  religious  movement 
makes  its  chief  speculative  contribution. 

In  the  precursors  of  the  intellectual  revival  in  the  Church 
there  is  little  prophecy  of  its  future  course.  Richard  Whately, 
the  most  commanding  figure  here,  is  primarily  a  logician,  and 
spiritually  has  more  in  common  with  the  milder  rationalism 
of  the  preceding  century  than  with  the  theologians  who  im- 

96 


Richard  Whately  97 

mediately  followed  him.  Whately's  most  influential  work  is 
in  the  field  of  formal  logic,  to  which  he  gave  a  new  impulse  by 
helping  to  clear  up  the  confusions  due  to  its  entanglement  with 
epistemology,  and  by  more  clearly  recognizing  its  practical 
function  within  these  narrower  limits;  logic  for  him,  that  is, 
is  not  a  method  for  the  discovery  of  truth,  but  has  its  use 
primarily  in  detecting  fallacies  in  argument.  An  interest  in 
puncturing  fallacies  is  the  most  characteristic  feature  of  Whate- 
ly's robust  and  acute,  but  not  over-sensitive  mind;  in  religion 
it  directs  his  attention  to  the  field  of  Christian  Evidences,  of 
which,  conceived  as  a  process  of  unfolding  the  implications  in 
the  premises  of  the  imbeliever,  and  so  bringing  him  to  admit 
your  conclusions,  Whately  thinks  very  highly.  A  striking 
example  of  his  method  is  the  readable,  ingenious,  and  quite 
irrelevant  Historic  Doubts  about  Napoleon,  which  is  intended 
by  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  to  show  how  unreasonable  are  at- 
tacks on  the  historical  truth  of  Christianity.  Of  the  same  in- 
tellectual type  as  Whately  is  R.  D.  Hampden,  now  chiefly 
remembered  as  the  storm  center  of  two  bitter  ecclesiastical 
controversies  in  the  era  of  Tractarianism ;  and  Adam  Sedg- 
wick the  geologian,  whose  Discourse  on  the  Studies  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Cambridge  contains  a  defence  of  natural  religion 
which  acquired  a  reputation  not  at  this  day  easy  to  under- 
stand. But  the  tendencies  which  Whately  and  Sedgwick 
represent  had  no  great  immediate  results.  The  only  name 
connected  with  Whately's  group  which  really  counts  for  much 
in  the  troubled  period  about  to  be  inaugurated  is  that  of 
Thomas  Arnold,  and  his  importance  lies  in  a  different  direction. 
2.  The  most  prominent  character  of  Arnold's  mind  is  his 
genuine  but  slightly  over-emphatic  piety.  The  religious  senti- 
ment is  a  sensitive  one,  and  when  we  set  out  actively  to  culti- 
vate it,  there  is  unfortunately  a  chance  of  interfering  with  its 
healthy  growth.  Arnold  is  lacking  in  any  sense  of  danger  here, 
any  check  to  his  clerical  enthusiasm.  It  was  the  outcome  of 
his  philosophy  that,  in  the  words  of  Dean  Stanley,  the  strong- 


98         English  and  American  Philosophy 

est  earthly  bond  should  be  identical  with  the  bond  of  Christian 
fellowship,  that  the  highest  earthly  power  should  avowedly 
minister  to  the  advancement  of  Christian  Holiness,  that  crimes 
should  be  regarded  as  sins,  and  that  Christianity  should  be  the 
acknowledged  basis  of  citizenship.  On  principle  he  is  led  to 
discountenance  any  disposition  to  stand  outside  his  own  party 
standpoint  and  to  judge  Christianity  impartially;  this  is  incom- 
patible with  the  cultivation  of  that  feeling  of  'intense  ad- 
miration" which  is  the  thing  most  necessary  to  human  per- 
fection. Two  current  views  about  the  proper  relation  between 
government  and  religion  were  in  the  field  in  Arnold's  day.  One 
was  the  extreme  theory  of  a  supernatural  church,  to  be  noticed 
presently  in  connection  with  the  Tractarian  movement;  at 
the  other  extreme  lay  the  purely  secular  theory  which  the 
Utilitarians  represented.  To  Arnold  both  theories  were  equally 
repugnant;  they  were  the  "two  great  opposite  forms  of  all 
human  wickedness."  What  he  wants  is  to  retain  the  supposed 
advantages  of  a  national  concern  for  religion  and  morality, 
without  tying  to  any  mystical  and  superstitious  notion;  and  he 
thinks  the  only  way  to  do  this  is  in  terms  of  his  own  concep- 
tion of  the  Church  as  a  great  society  for  the  encouragement  of 
goodness  and  piety.  Church  and  state  according  to  this  view 
are  not  distinct  and  possibly  competing  institutions.  "A  Chris- 
tian society  with  a  general  control  over  human  life,  with  a 
direct  interest  in  the  moral  welfare  of  its  members,  and  a 
sovereign  power  of  effecting  this  welfare  by  laws,  rewards  and 
punishments,  is  already  a  Church";  the  true  ideal  of  the  State 
is  a  Rugby  School  writ  large.  Arnold's  aim  is  thus  not  to 
secularize  the  Church,  but  to  Christianize  the  State,  and  so 
give  practical  efficacy  in  England  to  the  faith  of  those  who 
"earnestly  look  to  the  Church  as  the  appointed  and  only 
possible  means  of  all  earthly  improvement  for  society." 

One  practical  question  confronts  such  a  theory;  what  is 
the  nature  in  particular  of  the  ideal  which  a  given  society  is 
to  impress  upon  its  members,  and  who  is  to  determine  it?    This 


Thomas  Arnold  99 

issue  Arnold  faces  boldly.  "Every  people  in  that  country 
which  is  rightfully  theirs  may  establish  their  own  institutions 
and  their  own  ideas" ;  since  therefore  England  is  a  Christian 
country,  it  not  only  has  a  clear  right  to  make  Christianity  a 
state  religion,  but  Arnold  finds  it  hard  to  understand  the  con- 
dition of  mind  of  any  man  who  could  have  the  least  objection  to 
this.  He  even  anticipates  that  the  time  may  come  when  the  re- 
jection of  Christianity  would  be  clearly  a  moral  offence,  and 
when  "profane  writings  would  be  as  great  a  shock  to  all  men^s 
notions  of  right  and  wrong  as  obscene  writings  are  now,  and  the 
one  might  be  punished  with  no  greater  injury  to  liberty  of 
conscience  than  the  other."  It  is  his  "favorite  principle"  that 
the  "world  is  made  up  of  Christians  and  non-Christians;  with 
all  the  former  we  should  be  one,  with  none  of  the  latter.  I 
would  thank  the  Parliament  for  having  done  away  with  dis- 
tinctions between  Christian  and  Christian;  and  I 'would  pray 
that  distinctions  be  kept  up  between  Christian  and  non-Chris- 
tian." 

Arnold's  theory  had  little  chance  of  affecting  the  practical 
course  of  events.  To  say  nothing  of  the  fact  that  it  proposed 
to  maintain  or  increase  civil  disabilities  whose  ultimate  dis- 
appearance most  liberal  minds  perceived  to  be  inevitable,  its 
very  inclusiveness  even,  as  applied  to  Christians,  made  it  diffi- 
cult to  defend  on  grounds  of  principle.  There  may  apj>ear  some 
justification  for  compelling  a  man  to  subscribe  to  a  creed  if  you 
believe  that  in  this  creed  all  saving  truth  is  contained;  but 
there  seems  no  particular  point  in  such  compulsion  if  the  be- 
lief in  question  is  so  vague  and  attenuated  that  nobody  can 
tell  precisely  what  it  means  in  a  given  man's  mouth.  "If 
the  Arian,"  says  Arnold,  "will  join  in  our  worship  of  Christ, 
and  will  call  him  Lord  and  God,  there  is  neither  wisdom  nor 
charity  in  insisting  that  he  shall  explain  what  he  means  by 
these  terms."  .But  when  an  article  of  subscription  has  con- 
fessedly become  a  formula  which  anyone  is  at  liberty  to  inter- 
pret as  he  pleases  so  long  as  he  does  not  deviate  from  a  pre- 


lOO        English  and  American  Philosophy 

scribed  phraseology,  its  virtue  has  about  departed.  It  was 
a  much  more  virile  ideal  of  the  Church  which  was  to  become 
genuinely  an  issue  in  Arnold^s  day. 

3.  For  this  the  occasion  was  in  part  the  encroachment  of 
liberalism  upon  theology,  for  which  Arnold  also  stood  in  a  mild 
way,  but  also  and  more  immediately  the  threatened  invasion 
of  the  traditional  rights  of  the  Establishment  at  the  hands  of 
the  secular  power.  For  some  time  ecclesiastical  reforms  had 
been  impending  in  the  political  field  which  were  throwing  good 
Churchmen  into  a  state  of  exasperation  and  alarm.  The  Ox- 
ford Movement  in  its  inception  was  a  concerted  effort  to  stem 
the  tide  by  infusing  a  new  spirit  into  the  religious  life  within 
the  Church,  which  should  exalt  its  spiritual  power  above  danger 
from  worldly  forces.  And  since  it  is  upon  its  continuity  with 
primitive  Christianity  that  the  Establishment  bases  its  special 
claims,  a  revival  of  the  piety,  the  enthusiasm,  and  the  consis- 
tency of  the  church  of  the  early  Fathers  became  the  end  to 
which  a  little  group  of  earnest  and  brilliant  Oxford  men  set 
themselves. 

The  starting  point  of  the  movement  was  a  man  who  possessed 
in  himself  few  of  the  natural  gifts  of  an  aggressive  partisan 
leader.  John  Keble  is  chiefly  remembered  as  a  devotional 
poet,  who  gave  expression  in  his  verse  with  a  delicate  felicity 
not  only  to  the  sentimental  side  of  Anglican  ritualism,  but 
to  that  whole  quietistic  ideal  of  the  traditionally  "Christian" 
virtues  *  which  did  much  to  give  its  moral  appeal  to  the  new 
movement.  In  his  own  character  Keble  was  a  compound  of 
Christian  saintliness,  and  of  an  implacable  intolerance  toward 
whatever  lies  outside  the  range  of  Anglican  theology.  A  second 
and  more  aggressive  leading  spirit  is  Hurrell  Froude,  a  devoted 
friend  and  follower  of  Keble.  Froude  died  too  early  to  make  it 
possible  to  assign  him  his  intellectual  rank;  his  Remams, 
published  as  a  campaign  document,  raised  a  considerable  furor, 
but  less  from  positive  qualities  of  excellence  than  from  their 
outspoken  censure  of  the  heroes  of  the  Protestant  Reformation, 


John  Henry  Newman  loi 

It  was  Froude  who  was  responsible  for  bringing  into  the  move- 
ment the  one  leader  whose  abilities  are  clearly  of  the  first  order 
— ^John  Henry  Newman.  The  method  which  after  delibera- 
tion was  adopted  for  carrying  on  the  propaganda  was  the 
publication  of  a  series  of  small  pamphlets — the  famous  Tracts 
for  the  Times.  In  1835  the  Tractarian  group  received  2in 
important  accession  in  Edward  Bouverie  Pusey.  Pusey  was 
an  older  man,  with  high  family  connections,  a  reputation  for 
learning  in  certain  abstruse  fields,  an  ability  to  believe  with 
perfect  conviction  what  he  desired  to  believe,  and  much  piety 
of  the  obvious  sort.  He  added  therefore  great  prestige  to 
the  party,  and  when  later  on  the  exodus  to  Rome  took  place  he 
was  influential  in  anchoring  the  bulk  of  the  Tractarians  to  the 
Anglican  communion. 

4.  The  interest  of  the  Oxford  Movement  at  the  present  day 
centers  almost  wholly  about  the  intellectual  history  of  Newman. 
At  the  start  he  was  of  course  a  firm  believer  in  the  Church  of 
England.  But  now  for  him  who  holds  that  the  Church  is  the 
authoritative  interpreter  of  God  on  earth,  there  is  one  awk- 
ward question:  which  of  the  numerous  churches  that  exist, 
each  claiming  alone  to  possess  the  truth,  is  in  reality  di- 
vinely authorized?  Newman  felt  no  difficulty  about  the 
Protestant  denominations;  by  substituting  private  judgment 
for  authoritative  ecclesiastical  utterances,  they  seem  clearly  to 
be  out  of  the  running.  But  with  the  Roman  Church  it  is 
different.  If  one  is  looking  about  for  the  natural  marks  of  a 
representative  of  God  on  earth,  he  can  hardly  fail  to  recognize 
the  eminent  claims  of  Catholicism.  Its  universal  character,  its 
continuous  existence,  its  comparative  stability  of  doctrine,  its 
impressive  organization  and  ritual,  all  are  things  which  a  man, 
if  he  is  asking  for  an  agency  to  do  his  religious  thinking  for 
him,  will  naturally  find  congenial.  Newman  could  not  avoid 
seeing  this;  and  his  development  records  the  way  in  which  he 
came  to  realize  that  his  logical  place  was  not  in  the  Church 
of  England,  but  in  the  Church  of  Rome. 


I02       English  and  American  Philosophy 

5.  As  a  philosopher  Newman's  creed  starts  from  the  re- 
pudiation of  rationalism  in  the  interests  of  religious  faith. 
Rationalism,  as  he  defines  it,  is  the  disposition  to  demand  the 
"how"  and  "why"  of  a  doctrine  before  we  are  willing  to  accept 
it;  faith,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  acceptance  of  what  one's 
reason  cannot  reach  simply  upon  testimony,  the  "assenting 
to  a  doctrine  as  true  which  we  do  not  see,  which  we  cannot 
prove,  because  God  says  it  is  true."  Before  turning  to  the 
justification  which  he  attempts  to  give  to  this  attitude,  it  is 
worth  while  noting  its  source  in  his  own  personal  temperament. 
"The  happiest  state,"  he  once  remarks,  "is  not  that  of  com- 
manding or  directing,  but  of  obeying  solely,  not  having  to 
choose  for  oneself."  There  is  for  Newman  always  something 
good  in  obedience  as  such,  just  as  there  is  something  essentially 
wicked  in  self-assertion,  independently  of  what  may  turn  out 
to  be  its  results.  The  very  principle  of  sin  is  insubordination. 
Reverence  for  the  old  paths  is  a  chief  Christian  virtue;  curi- 
osity, as  the  expression  of  an  active  and  indepencient  spirit, 
is  man's  first  and  great  snare.  The  love  of  order  is  so  sacred 
a  principle  that  it  finds  expression  in  the  nature  of  God  him- 
self; "God  voluntarily  made  promises  and  put  himself  under 
engagements,  from  its  being  of  his  very  nature  to  love  order 
and  rule  and  subordination  for  their  own  sake."  Whatever 
comes  to  us  hallowed  by  the  past  has  a  claim  upon  us  simply 
as  custom,  irrespective  of  any  further  claim.  Instead  of  the 
Churchman  endeavoring  to  recommend  his  position  in  a  round- 
about way,  "how  much  better  and  more  honest  to  avow  that 
it  is  our  duty  to  stand  by  what  is  established  till  it  is  proved  to 
be  wrong,  and  to  maintain  customs  which  we  have  inherited, 
though  it  would  have  been  our  duty  to  resist  them  before  they 
were  received/'  So  in  the  practice  of  the  moral  life,  Newman's 
maxim  is  always  to  be  on  the  safe  side;  this  is  one  motive  back 
of  his  constant  leaning  toward  asceticism.  "The  Christian 
dares  not  walk  on  the  edge  of  a  precipice;  instead  of  going  to 


John  Henry  Newman  103 

the  extreme  of  what  is  allowable,  he  keeps  at  a  distance  from 
evil  that  he  may  be  safe." 

6.  With  this  temperamental  bias  as  a  starting  point,  what 
Newman  as  a  philosopher  is  called  upon  to  do  is  to  refute  the 
rationalistic  principle  that  our  belief  should  always  be  propor- 
tional to  the  evidence,  and  to  show  the  right  of  a  man  to  be- 
lieve beyond,  and  even  in  opposition  to,  reason  or  logic.  And 
he  proceeds  on  the  basis  of  two  main  distinctions.  The  first  is 
the  distinction  between  what  he  calls  real  and  notional  assent. 
Here  as  he  defines  it  the  difference  is,  that  real  assent  is  always 
to  the  concrete,  to  the  individual,  to  what  can  be  presented 
to  the  senses  or  the  imagination,  whereas  notional  assent  is  only 
to  abstractions — the  creations  in  a  way  of  our  own  minds.  The 
important  point  for  Newman,  however,  goes  a  little  deeper; 
at  bottom  real  assent  is  that  which  takes  hold  of  us  vitally, 
which  stirs  our  emotions  and  prompts  to  conduct,  which  is 
directed  not  simply  to  the  true,  but  to  the  beautiful,  the  use- 
ful, the  admirable  and  heroic,  to  objects  that  kindle  devotion, 
rouse  the  passions,  and  attach  the  affections — a  result  which 
involves  more  than  the  mere  presence  of  a  concrete  image, 
though  sense  and  imagination  supply  normally  the  sort  of  ob- 
ject most  congenial  to  our  emotional  and  moral  nature.  And 
the  application  lies  in  recognizing  that  religion — as  distinct 
from  theology — is  always  a  case  of  such  real  assent. 

A  second  distinction — and  this  leads  to  the  main  point  of 
Newman^s  argument — is  that  between  assent  and  inference. 
Assent,  he  holds,  as  a  state  of  untroubled,  undoubting  acquies- 
cence, is  an  act  of  mind  sui  generis,  to  be  sharply  distinguished 
from  that  merely  conditional  acceptance  which  goes  by  the 
name  of  inference,  or  reason,  or  logic.  It  follows  that  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  degrees  of  assent,  supposed  to  be  propor- 
tioned to  degrees  of  evidence.  When  I  assent  doubtfully,  I 
do  not  assent  at  all,  or,  rather,  what  I  do  is  to  assent  abso- 
lutely to  the  doubtfulness  of  the  proposition;  variations  of  as- 


104       English  and  American  Philosophy 

sent  are  in  reality  only  assents  to  a  variation  in  inferences. 
And  back  of  this  closing  of  the  mind  with  truth  which  assent 
presupposes,  there  is  no  more  ultimate  test.  The  feeling  of 
satisfaction,  of  intellectual  security,  the  sense  of  success,  at- 
tainment, finality,  is  the  last  word  in  the  matter;  we  have  no 
right  to  say  that  it  must  come  in  this  way  or  in  that,  but  can 
only  scrutinize  experience  to  discover  how  actually  it  does 
come.  Now  however  it  comes,  it  is  not  explainable  by  infer- 
ence as  such,  because  it  is  always  unconditional,  whereas  in- 
ference is  conditional.  Inference  fails  at  both  ends;  it  leads 
only  to  notional  truths,  to  probabilities  that  stop  short  of  the 
concrete  reality  with  which  alone  our  nature  is  satisfied;  and 
it  depends  on  the  prior  acceptance  of  general  principles  which 
also  are  notional,  and  about  which  men  may  and  do  widely  dis- 
agree. In  real  assent  inference  plays  a  part,  but  a  very  minor 
part.  What  we  call  assent  is,  rather,  a  concrete,  personal,  un- 
analyzable  act,  the  reaction  of  our  total  constitution  to  a  com- 
plex of  probabilities  arising  out  of  the  circumstances  of  the 
particular  case.  To  this  reaction  Newman  gives  the  name 
of  the  Illative  Sense — a  name  useful  perhaps  for  identifying 
the  fact,  provided  it  does  not  lead  us  to  suppose  that  we  are 
dealing  with  a  peculiar  mental  faculty  to  whose  simplicity, 
rather  than  to  the  subtlety  and  complexity  of  the  situation,  the 
difficulty  of  analysis  is  due. 

The  general  drift  of  Newman's  argument  is,  then,  that  the 
primary  sources  of  assent  are  not  logical,  but  go  back  rather 
to  our  emotional  and  practical  nature.  "Logic,"  he  writes, 
"makes  but  a  sorry  rhetoric  with  the  multitude;  first  shoot 
round  comers,  and  you  may  not  despair  of  converting  by  a 
syllogism."  What  the  everyday  man  is  after  is  reality,  not 
consistency;  whereas  logicians  are  more  set  upon  concluding 
rightly  than  on  right  conclusions.  Life  is  not  long  enough 
for  a  religion  of  inferences;  we  shall  never  have  done  begin- 
ning if  we  determine  to  begin  with  proof.  The  true  method 
of  reasoning  does  not  depend  on  logical  abstractions,  but  is 


John  Henry  Newman  105 

carried  out  into  the  realities  of  life,  "its  premises  being  instinct 
with  the  substance  and  the  momentum  of  that  mass  of  proba- 
bilities which,  acting  on  each  other  in  correction  and  confirma- 
tion, carry  home  definitely  to  the  individual  case."  Our  con- 
clusion must  be  no  smart  antithesis  which  may  look  well  on 
paper,  but  the  living  action  of  the  mind  on  a  great  problem 
of  fact.  Truth  is  thus  attainable,  but  its  rays  stream  in  upon 
us  through  the  medium  of  our  moral  as  well  as  of  our  intel- 
lectual being. 

7.  There  is  obvious  truth  in  Newman's  reading  of  the 
human  mind,  though  it  is  a  truth  very  easily  capable  of  being 
turned  to  questionable  uses.  The  fact  is  that  all  men  do 
bring  to  their  judgments  in  particular  a  mass  of  prepossessions 
which  color  and  shape  the  issue.  This  is  something  from  which 
we  cannot  get  away  if  we  would ;  but  it  is  far  from  immaterial 
what  attitude  we  take  with  reference  to  it.  The  attitude  to 
which  Newman's  own  fondness  for  authority  leads  him  is  one 
of  pious  acquiescence  in  the  presence  of  his  temperamental 
leanings.  Instead  of  viewing  these  impartially  and  critically, 
and  thus  giving  them  the  chance  to  reveal  their  own  possible 
shortcomings,  he  seeks  instead  to  encourage  and  strengthen 
them  in  every  way,  to  protect  them  from  rivalry,  to  force 
each  new  fact  into  their  mold  without  allowing  it  to  take 
its  own  course  and  suggest  its  natural  conclusion.  This  doubt- 
less is  what  men  are  as  a  matter  of  fact  tempted  to  do;  but  it 
is  the  essential  aim  of  liberalism  to  help  them  overcome  this 
temptation,  and  form  the  habit  of  realizing  to  themselves  sym- 
pathetically points  of  view  other  than  those  most  congenial  to 
their  natural  minds. 

8.  Put  briefly,  the  application  of  this  theory  of  belief  to 
Newman's  positive  outcome  starts  from  two  great  persuasions 
— the  reality  of  God,  and  the  universal  fact  of  human  sin  and 
misery.  The  first  comes  primarily  from  the  experience  of 
conscience.  For  Newman  the  feelings  of  obligation,  and  of 
remorse  and  guilt  when  conscience  is  violated,  are  inexplicable 


io6       English  and  American  Philosophy 

unless  they  point  to  a  personal  being  with  whom  man  stands 
in  immediate  relations  of  obedience  and  devotion.  They  do 
this  not  by  inference  and  abstract  reasoning,  but  directly  as 
a  matter  of  "real  assent";  just  as  on  the  human  plane  the 
shapes  and  colors  that  represent  my  neighbor's  body  lead  me 
by  an  instinctive  insight  to  the  individual  soul  behind  them. 
The  second  great  fact  is  that  man,  by  the  testimony  of  all  his- 
tory, is  clearly  in  apostasy  from  God,  and  so,  for  the  time 
being,  cast  off  from  his  presence.  And  the  two  facts  together 
create  the  presumption  which  Newman  brings  to  his  interpre- 
tation of  religious  history,  the  presumption  that  nothing  but 
supernatural  interference  and  an  infallible  authority — since 
reason  has  been  tried  and  palpably  has  broken  down — can 
remedy  the  disaster.  If  therefore  we  find  an  institution  pos- 
sessing the  actual  marks  which  our  presumption  would  lead  us 
to  look  for,  we  can  accept  its  claims  without  hesitation.  The 
basis  of  this  confidence  is  frankly  pragmatic;  the  Catholic 
religion  is  true  because  its  objects  control  and  influence  con- 
duct as  nothing  else  does,  because  it  has  about  it  an  "odor 
of  truth  and  sanctity  sui  generis,  as  perceptible  to  my  moral 
nature  as  flowers  to  my  sense,  such  as  can  come  only  from 
Heaven."  But  then  all  real  assent  is  pragmatic.  Meanwhile 
the  inability  of  reason  to  grasp  the  full  content  of  revelation 
is  no  ground  for  giving  up  our  certainty  of  its  truth,  because 
our  assent  is  directed  not  primarily  to  the  abstract  propositions, 
but  to  the  truthfulness  of  the  revealer;  and  there  is  no  more 
need  that  it  should  be  affected  by  the  inability  of  the  mind  to 
take  in  the  revelation  completely,  than  it  is  necessary  that 
a  boy  who  cannot  make  his  answer  to  a  mathematical  problem 
tally  with  the  book  should  at  once  distrust  the  book. 

It  may  be  remarked  in  passing  that  Newman's  argument, 
whatever  its  force,  is  hardly  sufficient  to  justify  his  own  par- 
ticular preference  for  an  external  authority  in  religion.  It  is 
true  that  in  matters  of  great  moment  we  wish  to  give  our  as- 
sent wholeheartedly  and  confidently.    Religion  is  not  a  weigh- 


John  Henry  Newman  107 

ing  of  probabilities;  it  is,  or  ought  to  be,  a  sincere  and  un- 
hesitating faith.  But  Newman  himself  has  pointed  out  a  way 
to  ground  this  without  the  need  for  resorting  to  an  infallible 
guide.  If  belief  rests  in  the  end  upon  the  sort  of  person  the 
believer  is,  there  is  no  need  that  normally  it  should  be  hesitat- 
ing and  feeble.  If  it  shows  itself  unstable,  the  cause  lies  not 
so  much  in  a  deficiency  of  reason,  as  in  a  deficiency  in  our- 
selves; there  is  not  in  us  the  solidity  of  aim  and  of  inner  tem- 
per sufficient  to  steady  belief,  and  our  uncertainty  therefore 
would  equally  show  itself  toward  the  claims  of  authority. 
True,  certainty  does  not  mean  infallibility.  It  is  only  that 
for  the  needs  of  the  time  being  we  are  convinced,  not  that  we 
have  any  absolute  assurance  that  this  conviction  is  unshakable 
in  the  future.  But  as  Newman  also  has  himself  remarked, 
such  an  abstract  possibility  of  mistake  is  no  real  drawback 
to  the  strength  of  present  assent,  since  this  last  depends  not  on 
logic,  but  on  grounds  more  deeply  seated  in  our  constitution. 
Newman's  endeavor  to  construct  a  theory  of  certitude  which 
shall  raise  belief  in  Catholic  truth  above  all  other  persuasions, 
as  something  to  which  we  not  only  assent  wholeheartedly,  but 
know  to  be  unshakable  and  final  truth,  is  a  total  failure;  it 
breaks  down  before  the  plain  fact  that  the  persuasion  of  certi- 
tude many  times  in  human  life  is  overthrown  by  growing  ex- 
perience, so  that  in  no  case  can  its  presence  serve  as  a  con- 
clusive test. 

9.  One  further  point  in  Newman's  doctrine  has  a  signifi- 
cance for  philosophy.  In  the  course  of  his  drift  towards  Cathol- 
icism he  had  felt  more  and  more  the  need  of  providing  for 
a  growing  rather  than  a  closed  revelation,  in  order  to  obviate 
the  objection,  urged  by  Protestants,  that  the  Church  has  added 
to,  and  so  corrupted,  the  truth  of  the  Gospel.  Now  the  funda- 
mental issue  here  may  be  separated  from  its  ecclesiastical  set- 
ting. If  anyone  believes  that  mankind  is  on  the  road  to  truth, 
he  seems  bound  to  recognize  as  a  test  something  in  the  nature 
of  an  objective  historical  process.     He  must  in  other  words 


io8       English  and  American  Philosophy 

admit  that  it  is  not  any  private  man^s  judgment,  but  the  de- 
veloping experience  of  mankind,  the  collective  wisdom  of  the 
race,  the  issue  of  great  movements  of  human  thought  attested 
by  their  permanent  and  settled  satisfactoriness,  which  in  the 
end  has  to  be  depended  on  to  winnow  out  falsehood  and  un- 
certainty. And  Newman  in  his  doctrine  of  Development  is 
trying  to  bring  this,  the  historical  test,  to  the  support  of 
Catholic  claims.  The  obvious  remark  to  be  made  about  his 
attempt  is,  not  that  the  test  is  wholly  inapplicable,  but  that 
he  is  trying  to  apply  it  prematurely  and  narrowly.  Thus  he 
has  in  the  first  place  to  assume  that  historical  development 
is  always  by  way  of  addition,  and  never  of  reversal ;  if  it  can  be 
shown  that  the  Church  has  even  once  in  its  long  history  been 
inconsistent  with  itself,  or  with  the  original  revelation,  he  ad- 
mits that  he  has  lost  his  case.  Of  course  his  way  is  smoothed 
here  for  him  by  his  rather  easy-going  theory  of  evidence,  and 
his  initial  assumption,  based  on  large  moral  and  spiritual 
grounds  rather  than  on  the  facts,  of  the  extreme  improbability 
that  inconsistencies  will  be  found  in  an  institution  already 
recognized  as  divine;  for  he  makes  it  very  plain  that  he  does 
not  consider  any  evidence  sufficiently  "positive  and  distinct'^ 
to  prove  an  inconsistency,  so  long  as  it  is  possible  by  any 
hypothesis,  however  strained,  to  bring  it  into  line  with  his  pre- 
suppositions. If  one  happens  not  to  start  with  this  same  as- 
sumption, Newman's  treatment  of  difficulties  is  thus  very  likely 
to  impress  him  as  a  resort  to  special  pleading.  "It  stands  to 
reason,"  Newman  writes  for  example,  in  defending  the  sup- 
posed discovery  of  the  true  cross,  "which  of  two  parties  is  the 
more  likely  to  be  right  on  a  question  of  topographical  fact — 
men  who  lived  three  hundred  years  after,  and  on  the  spot,  or 
those  who  lived  at  a  distance  of  a  thousand,  and  at  the  Antip- 
odes"; the  value  of  the  whole  apparatus  of  modem  scientific 
criticism  is  thus  swept  aside  with  a  word.  And,  in  the  second 
place,  Newman  really  plays  fast  and  loose  with  the  historical 
argument  when  he  refuses  to  direct  his  gaze  beyond  the  field 


W,  G.  Ward  109 

wherein  his  own  favorite  beliefs  are  found  to  rule.  The  his- 
tory of  Mankind  he  expressly  limits  to  the  brief  and  partial 
course  of  civilization  that  has  culminated  in  modem  Europe; 
and  even  in  Europe  the  history  of  Protestant  countries  is  set 
aside  as  irrelevant. 

10.  One  other  philosopher  of  real  attainments  is  to  be 
found  among  the  Tractarians — William  George  Ward.  Ward 
is  next  to  Newman  the  most  interesting  figure  in  the  Move- 
ment; he  combines  great  mental  sincerity  and  frankness  with 
logical  acuteness  of  a  high  order,  and  with  a  bluff  spontaneity, 
and  a  zest  for  the  human  and  the  secular,  which  contrasts  re- 
freshingly with  the  thinness  and  occasional  acerbity  of  the 
sacerdotal  temper.  Ward  admitted  freely  that  he  did  not 
himself  possess  the  gift  of  saintliness.  This  however  did  not 
prevent  him  from  admiring  and  reverencing  with  a  peculiar  in- 
tensity the  austerity  of  the  ascetic  and  saintly  character;  and 
it  was  the  absence  of  any  provision  for  this  in  the  Anglican 
church  which  turned  his  eyes  to  Rome.  His  Ideal  of  a  Chris- 
tian Church  is  a  powerful  indictment  of  the  smugness  and 
self-complacency  of  the  English  system,  the  absence  in  it  of 
any  adequate  means  of  moral  or  spiritual  discipline,  the  sub- 
servience to  rank  and  wealth,  and,  in  general,  the  "heavy,  un- 
spiritual,  unelastic,  prosaic,  unfeeling,  unmeaning  Protestant 
spirit";  and  he  argued  that  only  by  learning  from  Rome,  where 
the  claims  of  holiness,  humility,  unworldliness,  and  mystic 
contemplation  were  recognized  and  provided  for,  could  England 
hope  to  save  her  soul.  The  book  proved  one  of  the  turning 
points  in  the  history  of  the  movement;  it  helped  to  force  the 
hands  of  Newman,  and  to  precipitate  the  great  secession,  Ward 
himself  being  among  the  first  to  go. 

Philosophically  Ward's  defence  of  authority  follows  much 
the  lines  of  Newman,  with  perhaps  a  greater  relative  emphasis 
on  the  way  in  which  belief  is  dependent  on  a  practical  life  of 
devotion  and  obedience.  Since  it  is  conscience  rather  than 
reason  which  brings  men  into  contact  with  the  realities  of  re- 


no       English  and  American  Philosophy 

ligion,  it  is  absurd  to  suppose  that  the  right  way  to  investi- 
gate religion  is  to  give  up  its  practice  for  an  attitude  of 
rational  impartiality,  and  so  turn  it  provisionally  into  a  mat- 
ter of  sceptical  doubt;  this  would  be  as  if  one  were  to  shut  his 
eyes  that  he  might  do  full  justice  to  arguments  intended  to 
convince  him  that  a  tree  within  ten  yards  of  him  does  not 
really  exist  there.  Ward  also  comes  into  contact  with  the 
secular  currents  of  English  philosophy,  in  connection  with  a 
long  continued  critical  attack  upon  the  underlying  principles 
of  the  sensationalists,  more  particularly  of  J.  S.  Mill.  Here 
his  general  thesis  is,  that  the  foundations  of  a  Catholic  phi- 
losophy are  already  admitted  in  our  necessary  acceptance  of 
certain  truths  on  the  basis  of  an  unproved  intuition;  and  along 
this  line  he  criticizes  acutely  MilFs  attempt  to  find  a  purely 
empirical  source  for  truths  such  as  those  of  mathematics  and 
of  causal  law.  That  on  which  Ward  more  particularly  rests 
his  case,  as  at  once  simple  and  conclusive,  is  the  fact  of 
memory.  Unless  we  accept  the  pronouncement  of  memory  as 
to  the  reality,  not  merely  of  the  present  impression  about  a 
past  event,  but  of  the  actual  existence  of  that  event  in  the  past, 
we  are  incapable  of  taking  a  single  step  in  the  way  of  reason- 
ing; and  this  conviction  has  absolutely  no  warrant  from  ''ex- 
perience"— which  can  only  become  experience  by  taking  it  for 
granted, — or  from  anything  save  the  self-evidence  of  its  own 
claim.  It  of  course  follows  that  for  Ward  moral  truths  also 
are  the  products  of  this  gift  of  intuition — a  thesis  which  he 
uses  effectively  to  overthrow  the  theological  doctrine  that  they 
are  established  by  the  arbitrary  will  of  God. 

§  2.    Liberalism  in  Theology.     Coleridge.    Maurice. 
Matthew  Arnold 

I.  While  Tractarianism  in  its  later  history  was  tending 
more  and  more  to  become  a  matter  of  ecclesiastical  politics 
rather  than  of  ideas,  another  form  of  religious  philosophy  was 


Wordsworth  1 1 1 

extending  its  influence  with  permanent  effects  on  the  recon- 
struction of  Christian  doctrine.  For  one  important  source  of 
this  new  tendency,  it  is  necessary  to  turn  back  to  certain 
aspects  of  the  romantic  movement  at  the  beginning  of  the 
century.  It  has  appeared  that,  according  to  the  traditional 
theory  accredited  to  Locke,  and  adopted  by  the  associationists 
generally,  the  mind  is  originally  a  sheet  of  white  paper.  On 
it  various  occurrences  in  the  outer  world  impress  themselves, 
leaving  this  or  that  particular  sensation  or  idea,  by  the  com- 
bination of  which  sensations  into  complex  objects  all  the  con- 
tent of  knowledge  arises;  to  understand  the  soul  and  its  life, 
therefore,  is  to  conduct  an  analysis  of  it  into  its  primitive  con- 
stituents. Long  before  this  ceased  to  be  the  dominant  principle 
of  psychological  science,  its  deficiencies  were  expressed  with 
great  force  and  vividness  by  the  poet  Wordsworth.  For 
Wordsworth,  man  is  no  complex  of  atomic  sensations,  but  a 
unitary  and  living  soul,  capable  of  reaching  out  far  beyond 
the  meagre  results  of  analytical  and  logical  reasoning,  guided 
by  warm  feeling,  and  seeking  for  beauty  and  significance 
rather  than  for  mere  scientific  law  and  classified  fact.  On 
this  new  psychological  basis  Wordsworth  had  rested  a  philos- 
ophy of  nature  as  well,  sharply  opposed  to  the  current  creed. 
The  world  of  nature  is  not  an  intricate  piece  of  mechanism. 
Its  true  reality  is  spiritual ;  and  with  this  spirit  man  may  com- 
mune with  immediate  sympathy  and  delight,  and  in  so  com- 
muning may  grow  in  wisdom  through  a  process  of  unconscious 
receptiveness  far  surer  and  more  expeditious  than  science  can 
insure. 

2.  The  influence  which  Wordsworth  exerted  over  the 
thought  of  the  nineteenth  century,  though  very  considerable, 
is  for  the  most  part  too  indirect  and  pervasive  to  be  traced 
with  much  precision.  In  the  case  of  Wordsworth's  friend 
Coleridge  a  much  more  visible  line  of  influence  is  discernible. 
Coleridge's  philosophy,  in  its  most  general  terms,  may  be 
defined  as  an  attempt  to  put  life  into  the  dry  bones  of  the 


112        English  and  American  Philosophy 

political,  religious,  and  literary  orthodoxy  of  his  day,  to 
internalize  accepted  truth,  and  translate  it  back  into  the  per- 
sonal experience  out  of  which  it  arose.  Here  for  example  is  a 
religious  doctrine — say  the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement.  The 
common  theologian  regarded  it  as  a  statement  of  events  that 
took  place  in  the  courts  of  heaven,  a  legal  transaction  between 
the  persons  of  the  Trinity;  for  Coleridge,  to  be  worth  holding 
at  all,  it  must  symbolize  rather  some  vital  fact  in  a  man's 
own  inner  life.  The  ground  for  the  prevalent  narrow  and 
arid  conception  of  religion  Coleridge  found  in  particular  in 
wrong  conceptions  of  the  Bible;  and  perhaps  the  most  im- 
portant single  thing  in  his  religious  teaching  was  his  protest 
against  the  bibliolatry  of  the  popular  religion — the  theory  of 
a  ''superhuman  Ventriloquist," — ^and  his  influence  in  getting  a 
hearing  for  a  less  magical  theory  of  inspiration.  For  Coleridge, 
the  test  of  truth  is  not  authority  or  miracle,  but  the  ability 
to  find  men,  and  affect  their  conduct  and  emotions. 

The  tool  which  Coleridge  brought  to  the  task  of  reconstruct- 
ing theology  was  the  transcendental  philosophy  of  Germany; 
^     though  probably  even  before  he  became  acquainted  with  this, 
~^1  his  mind  was  set  in  very  much  the  same  direction  under  the 
I  influence  of  Platonizing  thought.     His  philosophy  was  never 
^  worked  out  systematically,  and  it  is  possible  that  the  loss  is 
\not  a  great  one;  Coleridge's  power  lies  in  flashes  of  concrete 
insight  rather  than  in  connected  reasoning.     The  one  chief 
point  on  which  his  treatment  turns  is  the  distinction  between 
two  levels  of  the  intellectual  life — the  Understanding,  and  the 
Reason.     By   Understanding,    Coleridge   means   roughly   the 
processes  of  scientific  generalization,  where  we  start  with  par- 
ticular facts,  and  then  go  on  to  systematize  them  by  comparing 
and  combining.    For  Coleridge,  however,  there  is  another  and 
higher  t3^e  of  knowledge,  though  of  the  exact  nature  of  this, 
as  a  matter  of  technical  philosophy,  he  is  not  successful  in 
giving  a  very  lucid  account.    Reason  is  in  the  first  place  held 
to  be  constituted  by  ultimate  principles  of  our  rational  nature, 


Coleridge  113 

which  are  necessary  for  making  even  the  facts  of  the  under- 
standing really  intelligible.  These  cannot  come  from  the 
senses;  "the  solution  of  phenomena  can  never  be  derived  from 
phenomena."  Since  they  are  what  we  bring  to  the  understand- 
ing of  the  world,  in  the  nature  of  the  case  they  are  ultimate 
and  underivable,  else  we  should  have  the  "absurdity  of  de- 
manding proof  for  the  very  facts  which  constitute  the  nature 
of  him  who  demands  it."  But  now  also  there  is  another  way 
of  looking  at  the  distinction  which  has  no  specially  self-evident 
connection  with  the  metaphysical  account.  This  is  essenticdly 
identical  with  Wordsworth's  teaching,  and  may  be  described 
not  inaccurately  in  terms  of  the  common  distinction  between 
knowledge,  and  wisdom.  Wisdom  in  this  sense  has  to  do  not 
merely  with  seeing  things  as  a  whole  from  some  central  point 
of  view;  this  central  standpoint  is  preeminently  a  matter  of 
valuation.  "My  opinion  is  this,"  Coleridge  writes  to  his  friend 
Thomas  Poole,  "that  deep  thinking  is  attainable  only  by  a 
man  of  deep  feeling,  and  that  all  truth  is  a  species  of  revela- 
tion." The  true  end  of  philosophy  is  to  "make  the  reason 
I  spread  light  over  the  feelings,  and  to  make  our  feelings,  with 
J  their  vital  warmth,  actualize  our  reason."  The  special  meta- 
physical ground  for  this  he  finds  in  the  adoption  of  the  Kantian 
^\  or  Fichtean  doctrine  of  the  supremacy  of  the  Moral  Reason. 
'  The  highest  Reason  is  not  a  fact  of  knowledge,  but  a  form  of 
living.  "The  practical  Reason  alone  therefore  is  Reason  in 
the  full  and  substantive  sense;  the  Theoretic  Reason  as  the 
ground  of  the  Universal  and  Absolute  in  all  logical  Conclusions 
is  rather  the  Light  of  Reason  in  the  Understanding/* 

About  the  final  philosophical  implications  of  this  theory  of 
knowledge  Coleridge  professes  himself  not  very  vitally  con- 
cerned. What  he  insists  upon  is  the  validity  of  the  rational 
principles  which  we  bring  to  the  interpretation  of  the  world, 
and  their  practical  subordination  to  the  moral  insight ;  whether 
now  the  ultimate  ideals  of  Reason  are  to  be  regarded  as  reg- 
ulative only — as  mere  functions  of  the  mind, — or  as  con- 


s| 


r 


114       English  and  American  Philosophy 

stitutive  and  actual,  one  in  essence  with  the  power  and  life 
of  nature,  as  Plato  teaches,  he  conceives  is  of  living  interest 
only  to  the  philosopher  by  profession.  Personally  he  ranges 
/  himself  on  the  side  of  the  Platonists;  Reason  in  man  he  cott- 
er /  ceives  to  be  the  true  revelation  of  a  Living  Power  which,  as 
^^  I  self-conscious  will  and  intelligence,  meets  man  face  to  face  in 
nature,  and  communes  with  the  spiritual  principle  in  him.  One 
may  have  a  grounded  faith  in  religion  without  this  speculative 
justification;  but  it  has  its  religious  value  nevertheless.  And 
in  particular  it  becomes  a  matter  of  direct  importance  on  the 
negative  side,  as  a  weapon  against  a  competing  philosophy.  In 
his  attack  upon  the  mechanistic  doctrines  of  science,  the  prac- 
tical and  speculative  interests  join  hands.  To  Coleridge,  as  a 
protagonist  of  spirit  and  the  ideal,  Hartley's  mechanical  con- 
I  ception  of  a  world  "left  a  lifeless  Machine  whirled  about  by 
the  dust  of  its  own  Grinding"  seems  in  self-evident  opposition 
to  all  the  genuine  demands  of  the  soul.  The  universe,  if  sci- 
ence is  the  last  word,  is  like  a  "string  of  blind  men  each  holding 
to  the  skirt  of  the  man  before  him  reaching  far  out  of  sight, 
but  all  moving  on  without  the  least  deviation  in  one  straight 
line.  It  would  be  naturally  taken  for  granted  that  there  was  a 
guide  at  the  head  of  the  file;  what  if  it  were  answered — No! 
sir,  the  men  are  without  number,  and  infinite  blindness  supplies 
the  place  of  sight?" 

3.  The  practical  bearing  of  Coleridge's  philosophy,  as  issu- 
ing in  particular  in  that  spirit  of  historical  reverence  which 
lies  close  to  the  center  of  the  Coleridgian  point  of  view,  and 
which  is  characteristic  of  its  later  theological  developments, 
comes  to  light  most  conspicuously  in  his  political  theory.  The 
radicals  in  their  desire  for  reform  had  fixed  their  eyes  too 
exclusively,  he  thought,  on  the  defects  of  existing  conditions. 
But  society  cannot  thrive  on  criticism  alone;  it  must  have 
fMDsitive  bonds  of  union.  And  these  bonds  for  the  mass  of 
men  are  historically  founded.  There  is  need  for  the  cultivation 
of  an  inner  spirit  of  loyalty  and  social  feeling  if  society  is  to 


i 


Coleridge  115 

hang  together;  and  this  is  the  product  necessarily  of  concrete 
social  conditions.  In  making  a  wholesale  attack  upon  the  past, 
the  reformers  were  unconsciously  cutting  the  ground  from  un- 
derneath the  realization  of  their  own  professed  ideals;  their 
work  of  criticism  needs  to  be  supplemented  by  a  more  positive 
interpretation  of  the  real  values  embodied  in  the  past.  It  was 
not  that  Coleridge  was  satisfied  with  the  existing  state  of 
England.  But  he  thought  the  trouble  was  not  that  institutions 
were  bad,  but  that  the  ideas  originally  underlying  them  had 
been  forgotten.  Instead  of  rejecting  them,  therefore,  with  all 
their  possibilities  of  effectiveness  through  their  hold  on  the 
mass  of  men,  the  true  method  of  reform  is,  by  a  renewed  in- 
sight into  the  inner  spirit  of  the  institution,  to  revive  the 
significance  for  human  life  which  it  must  originally  have  had. 
Instead  of  beginning  in  political  science  with  abstract  prin- 
ciples of  reason,  the  true  starting  point  is  the  philosophic  idea^ 
or  purpose,  to  which  concrete  institutions  give  expression. 
The  truth  of  this  is  proved  progressively  by  its  success  in 
throwing  light  upon  the  actual  facts;  while  also  it  supplies  an 
immanent  principle  of  criticism  for  testing  and  getting  rid  of 
whatever  thwarts  the  underlying  purpose,  and  so  makes  prog- 
ress possible.  And  there  is  of  course  much  sound  philosophy 
here.  Two  things  it  sets  itself  against — the  supremacy  of 
unthinking  habit  and  prejudice,  and  the  supremacy  of  un- 
disciplined feelings ;  it  demands  in  both  cases  the  addition  of  a 
third  essential — enlightened  insight.  To  those  who  acquiesce 
even  in  good  custom,  Coleridge  brings  the  demand  that  also 
we  should  discover  the  rational  ground  of  our  acquiescence; 
radicalism  and  Jacobinism,  on  the  other  hand,  seemed  to  him 
equally,  though  in  a  very  different  way,  to  be  dispensing  with 
reason,  and  to  call  urgently  for  "law  and  light,"  as  against 
the  dominance  of  shapeless  feelings,  sentiments  and  impulses. 
To  "hurrying  enlighteners"  and  "revolutionary  amputators" 
he  presents  the  rational  claims  of  the  gradual  processes  of 
nature,  and  the  "historical  spirit." 


ii6        English  and  American  Philosophy 

There  are,  however,  distinct  possibilities  of  danger  in  the 
type  of  political  philosophy  which  Coleridge  recommends. 
The  discovery  that  institutions  are  intelligible,  when  we  had 
only  been  in  the  habit  of  regarding  them  either  as  authoritative, 
or  as  objectionable,  is  very  likely,  in  the  man  of  speculative 
interests,  to  give  them  a  new  and  peculiar  hold  upon  the 
mind,  which  may  easily  come  to  compete  with  another  stand- 
ard. This  is  the  Benthamite  standard  which  tests  institutions 
by  the  concrete  practical  effects  we  can  trace  on  the  everyday 
happiness  of  ourselves  and  other  human  beings,  as  against 
the  larger,  more  intellectual,  more  abstract  and  grandiose  test 
of  conformity  to  some  ideal  type  which  history,  or  theory,  has 
implanted  in  our  minds.  In  this  way  it  is  very  possible  that 
the  philosopher  of  society  may  become  too  tender  of  the 
"idea" — the  theoretical  justification  of  the  institution  in  terms 
\  of  its  abstract  speculative  merits,  or  its  historical  and  cultural 
associations — in  comparison  with  concrete  wrongs  that  indi- 
viduals may  be  suffering.  The  task  of  emphasizing  the  good 
points  of  the  status  quo  is  one  that  needs  doing,  and  it  may  be 
regarded  as  fortunate  that  there  are  those  who  find  it  con- 
genial; but  it  is  a  drawback  that  it  seems  so  often  to  require  a 
belief  in  the  intellectual  finality  of  the  products  of  the  past, 
which  one  has  only  to  live  a  sufficient  number  of  years  to  find 
disproved  by  the  course  of  events.  It  is  significant  that  in 
most  of  the  changes  which  Coleridge  himself  opposed,  in  the 
full  confidence  that  he  was  doing  God  and  philosophy  service, 
history  has  already  decided  against  him. 

4.  Both  the  strength  and  the  weakness  of  Coleridge^s  phi- 
losophy are  exemplified  in  a  group  of  theologians  who  were 
instrumental  in  bringing  it  to  bear  upon  English  religious 
thought,  and  of  whom  Frederick  Denison  Maurice  is  the 
most  important.  It  is  natural  that  the  religious  innovator 
should  show  a  tenderness  for  familiar  forms  of  belief  and 
worship,  and  should  prefer  wherever  possible  to  keep  his  new 
wine  in  old  bottles.     But  the  consequence  of  this  is  seldom 


F.  D.  Maurice  117 

favorable  to  the  integrity  of  the  intellectual  life.  Take  as  an 
example  Coleridge's  attitude  toward  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity. 
Coleridge  held  it  greatly  important  that  we  refuse  to  give  up 
this  doctrine;  it  would,  he  thought,  be  a  fatal  sacrifice  of  high 
spiritual  truth.  And  what  now  is  this  truth  when  it  is  reduced 
to  philosophical  form?  "My  faith,"  says  Coleridge,  "is  this: — 
God  is  the  Absolute  Will ;  it  is  his  Name  and  the  meaning  of  it. 
It  is  the  Hypostasis.  As  begetting  his  own  Alterity,  the  Je- 
hovah, the  Manifested,  he  is  the  Father;  but  the  Love  and 
the  Life — the  Spirit — ^proceeds  from  both."  It  is  difficult  not 
to  suspect  that  Coleridge  is  yielding  here  to  the  temptation 
to  allow  the  play  of  the  metaphysical  fancy  to  delude  him  into 
thinking  he  has  discovered  sound  reason  for  holding  to  a 
belief  whose  real  force  lies  only  in  its  familiar  associations. 
And  the  intellectual  cloudiness  which  this  will  surely  beget 
nowhere  shows  itself  so  conspicuously  in  alliance  with  real 
ability  as  in  Maurice. 

Maurice  was  one  of  the  influential  personalities  of  his  day. 
He  managed  to  convey  to  many  impressionable  natures  a 
peculiar  sense  of  profundity  and  spiritual  insight;  and  some- 
thing of  this  he  did  undoubtedly  possess.  But  with  the  best 
will  to  give  Maurice  his  due,  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  he 
is  often  very  provoking.  One  reads  page  after  page  marked 
by  impressive  earnestness,  a  sense  of  fateful  issues,  a  high 
ethical  purpose,  only  at  the  end  to  find  himself  asking  in 
some  perplexity  just  what  it  is  all  about.  Such  is  the  con- 
tumelious spirit  of  average  mankind,  that  this  difficulty  in 
shaping  a  clear-cut  and  unambiguous  issue  ends  by  weakening 
interest  in  the  prophet^s  message.  What  at  bottom  Maurice 
was  trying  to  express  is  after  all,  apparently,  not  very  difficult 
to  understand.  In  the  large  he  wants  to  maintain  that  re- 
ligion is  a  life,  rather  than  a  matter  either  of  historical  or  of 
logical  evidence;  and  a  life  having  its  source  in  a  Power  not 
ourselves  making  for  peace  and  happiness.  Truth  is  not  a 
prisoner  at   the  bar  awaiting  with  some   apprehension  our 


'/ 


ii8        English  and  American  Philosophy 

human  verdict;  it  is  the  great  soul  of  the  universe  which  en- 
velops us  and  puts  forth  its  fruits  through  us.  It  is  something 
which  is  positive,  not  negative;  which  we  should  aim  to  em- 
brace in  its  fulness  rather  than  try  to  pare  down  to  a  minimum; 
which  does  not  wait  on  reasoned  proof  and  critical  weighing 
of  evidence,  but  makes  its  immediate  impression  on  the  heart 
and  conscience.  Faith  is  not,  as  Protestant  theologians  had 
tended  to  regard  it,  the  ground  of  our  salvation,  as  if  it  were  a 
constitutive  power  and  made  the  thing  to  be.  It  is  a  mere 
power  of  recognition,  and  points  to  a  foregone  reality;  the 
real  center  of  religion  is  a  Living  Being  whom  to  know  is  life. 
Or  as  a  disciple  of  Maurice  puts  it,  ''Our  grasp  of  the  thought 
can  never  be  worth  much;  it  is  the  grasp  of  the  Truth  upon 
us  that  men  are  willing  to  die  for." 

But  Maurice  begins  at  once  to  make  trouble  for  himself. 
In  the  legitimate  desire  to  give  to  truth  an  objective  and  his- 
torical backing,  he  chose,  as  Newman  did,  to  take  the  stand 
that  tradition  has  in  its  favor  every  material  presumption ;  and 
he  will  never  therefore,  if  he  can  help  it,  let  new  truth  shape 
its  own  form  and  expression.  And  the  reasons  which  he  has 
for  this  attitude  are  not  without  force.  Belief  in  fixed  articles, 
Maurice  argues,  enables  me  to  believe  the  world  is  progressive, 
not  stationary.  If  after  nearly  six  thousand  years  we  assume 
nothing  is  known  about  questions  of  most  concern,  we  shall 
not  expect  that  anything  will  be  known.  The  best  way  to 
advance  in  truth  is,  then,  not  to  regard  with  a  suspicious 
eye  all  past  attainment,  and  refuse  to  utilize  it  until  it  has 
produced  its  full  credentials;  we  must  first  accept  it  in  the 
large  before  we  can  build  upon  it,  and  so  appreciate  the  real 
force  of  its  evidence.  Any  other  course  is  to  make  a  stumbling 
block  out  of  what  ought  to  be  a  spiritual  help.  The  answer 
to  this  however  is  the  same  as  in  Newman's  case;  whatever 
presumption  there  is  in  general  that  mankind  has  attained  to 
truth,  the  identification  of  the  results  of  the  education  of 
himianity  with  the  Anglican  formularies  is  too  hasty.    And  the 


F.  D,  Maurice  119 

insistence  that  always  we  should  find  a  home  for  every  aspect 
of  truth  within  the  sacred  phraseology  sanctioned  by  the 
Church  is  bound  to  lead  to  just  the  result  Maurice  deprecates 
■ — ^subtle  casuistries,  improfitable  disputes  about  the  meaning 
of  words,  an  emphasis  on  the  letter  before  we  are  free  to 
emphasize  the  spirit.  For  the  controversial  mind  this  issues 
in  all  sorts  of  makeshifts  not  stopping  short  of  intellectual  dis- 
honesty; Maurice  is  not  himself  a  controversialist,  but  the 
outcome  in  his  case  is  perhaps  even  more  dangerous  in  its 
ultimate  tendency.  It  leads  him,  that  is,  to  deprecate  any 
disposition  to  put  the  issue  sharply,  or  to  allow  the  mind  to 
range  beyond  what  makes  for  religious  edification.  It  is  this 
dislike  of  facing  issues,  rather  than  any  unavoidable  obscurity 
in  his  own  positive  beliefs,  that  is  responsible  for  Maurice's 
pervading  cloudiness.  Thus  his  own  views  were  strongly  in 
the  direction  of  the  new  and  freer  conception  of  the  Scriptures. 
But  instead  of  coming  to  the  aid  of  Colenso,  he  takes  the  side 
of  his  enemies,  not  because  Colenso 's  criticisms  are  mistaken, 
but  because  the  moral  lessons  of  the  Bible  are  so  greatly  more 
important  than  questions  of  literal  accuracy,  that  doubts 
about  the  latter  ought  to  be  kept  as  much  as  possible  in  the 
background.  A  remark  of  Maurice^s  in  this  connection  is  a 
commentary  on  his  position;  the  subject  of  inspiration,  he  says, 
is  one  "for  prayer,  not  for  definition."  People  who  like  to 
start  with  definitions — who  like,  that  is,  to  know  approxi- 
mately what  they  are  talking  about — will  not  find  this  accept- 
able. 

The  ineffectualness  to  which  such  a  temper  of  mind  will 
lead  is  illustrated  again  in  Maurice's  social  interests.  Maurice 
may  be  regarded  as  the  founder  of  Christian  Socialism;  it  was 
he  who  gave  it  it3  name,  intending  this,  as  he  says,  to  commit 
the  movement  to  a  conflict  "with  the  unsocial  Christians  and 
the  unchristian  Socialists."  Here  his  peculiarity  of  mind  shows 
in  the  tendency  to  think  that  if  he  can  identify,  in  some  com- 
plex existing  institution,  any  point  of  community  with  an  ab- 


120        English  and  American  Philosophy 

stract  spiritual  ideal,  he  forthwith  has  justified  its  right  to 
continued  existence.  Thus  aristocracy  must  have  its  place  in 
the  state,  because  there  is  needed  a  witness  to  the  lordship 
of  the  spirit  over  the  flesh.  The  sovereignty  of  the  people, 
on  the  other  hand,  he  repudiates  as  at  once  the  "silliest  and 
most  blasphemous  of  all  contradictions";  and  the  reason  is 
that  all  sovereignty  is  by  grace  of  God.  How  far  removed 
from  a  comprehension  of  the  real  political  and  industrial  situa- 
tion such  a  mental  attitude  leaves  Maurice  and  men  like  him, 
is  not  obscurely  suggested  by  setting  alongside  its  seething 
forces  and  complicated  problems  the  list  of  benefits  which  he 
congratulated  himself  had  been  the  outcome  of  Christian  So- 
cialism— Sunday  a  day  of  rest,  intemperance  checked,  po- 
litical agitation  discouraged,  and  a  number  of  workingmen  led 
to  see  the  folly  and  danger  of  strikes. 

5.  The  intellectual  instability  which  thus  characterized 
most  of  the  constructive  religious  thinking  of  the  middle  of  the 
century,  with  its  attempt  to  retain  dogmas  while  emptying 
them  of  any  content  which  the  average  churchman  could  lay 
his  finger  on  with  the  certainty  that  he  knew  with  what  he 
was  dealing,  had  several  consequents,  or  sequents,  which 
Maurice  could  not  have  contemplated  with  entire  complacency. 
One  of  these  was  the  disposition  to  set  aside  the  reconstruction 
of  theology  altogether,  and  to  occupy  oneself  with  practical 
religion  in  the  form  of  Christian  service.  A  striking  repre- 
sentative of  this  tendency  is  Charles  Kingsley,  himself  a  dis- 
ciple of  Maurice,  and  his  co-worker  in  the  field  of  Christian 
Socialism.  Kingsley  represents,  very  nearly  at  its  best,  the 
utilization  of  religious  sentiment,  and  a  rousing  appeal  to  the 
better  side  of  human  nature,  for  the  active  work  of  the 
preacher  of  righteousness.  Let  us  get  enthusiastically  together 
and  do  something  for  the  glory  of  God,  and  matters  of  theory 
will  look  after  themselves.  But  if  one  stops  to  think  for  a 
moment  instead  of  being  carried  off  his  feet,  he  will  perhaps 


Charles  Kingsley  12 1 

begin  to  wonder  how  much  in  the  way  of  a  doctrinal  creed 
and  ecclesiastical  organization  he  is  thus  letting  himself  in  for. 
A  call  to  men  to  abandon  unprofitable  controversy,  and  to 
enlist  under  the  banner  of  a  great  historic  Church  in  the 
warfare  for  human  good,  is  likely  to  forget  that  the  Church 
is  no  mere  ideal  of  fellowship,  but  a  very  concrete  and  defi- 
nitely constituted  social  institution;  and  if  any  one  did  have  a 
selfish  interest  in  keeping  its  historic  features  unaltered,  he 
could  hardly  hope  for  circumstances  more  favorable  to  his 
aims  than  that  men  generally  should  eschew  the  exercise  of  the 
critical  intellect,  and  throw  themselves  without  reserve  into 
schemes  of  practical  philanthropy  under  its  leadership. 

6.  A  different  form,  much  simpler  than  that  adopted  by 
Maurice,  of  the  attempt  to  make  religion  a  life  and  not  a 
system,  may  likewise  be  used  to  cover  up  the  extent  of  the 
break  from  orthodox  Christianity.  This  is  to  retain,  not  the 
church,  nor  the  creed,  nor  the  Bible,  but  the  historical  Jesus 
as  the  central  object  and  practical  source  of  authority  in 
religion.  This  very  indefinite  theory  of  authority  as  located 
in  the  moral  personality  of  Christ  became  an  issue  in  the 
sixties  in  connection  with  the  publication  of  an  anonymous 
volume — its  author  was  Professor  John  R.  Seeley — which  for  a 
time  was  the  subject  of  much  discussion  and  much  vitupera- 
tion; Lord  Shaftesbury,  for  example,  the  recognized  leader  of 
the  Evangelicals,  speaks  of  it  rather  excitedly  as  the  "most 
pestilential  book  ever  vomited  from  the  jaws  of  hell."  Ecce 
Homo  is  an  attempt  at  an  historical  reconstruction  of  primitive 
Christianity,  under  the  guidance  of  moral  preferences  rather 
than  of  a  critical  apparatus;  its  interest  is  to  set  before  us 
the  human  side  of  Jesus,  leaving  the  validity  of  dogmatic  re- 
ligion discreetly  in  the  background.  The  same  lack  of  sharp 
definition  characterizes  Seeley's  later  book  on  Natural  Religion, 
Natural  religion — the  worship,  that  is,  or  enthusiastic  con- 
templation, of  whatever  in  the  known  universe  appears  worthy 


122       English  and  American  Philosophy 

of  worship — is  and  is  not  sufficient;  it  is  the  one  essential  and 
necessary  thing  in  religion,  while  it  still  must  not  be  under- 
stood as  at  all  denying  the  worth  of  a  supernatural  revelation. 
7.     Meanwhile  the  tenuous  and  uncertain  character  which 
theology  was  coming  to  take  on  under  the  influence  of  liberal- 
ism was  not  without  its  effect  in  a  more  practical  direction. 
It  need  not  prove  surprising  if,  especially  in  the  case  of  men 
actively  engaged  in  administering  the  machinery  of  the  Church, 
a  spirit  of  opportunism  were  to  be  encouraged  by  the  increas- 
ing fluidity  of  doctrine.     The  best  illustration  of  this  last 
tendency  is  to  be  found  in  Benjamin  Jowett,  the  celebrated 
Master  of  Balliol,  and  a  powerful  force  in  the  ranks  of  liberal- 
ism.   One  of  the  striking  features  of  Jowett's  mind  is  his  con- 
scious justification  of  such  an  opportunism,  as  against  what  he 
considers  an  unhealthy  scrupulosity.     Here  is  an  institution 
existing  with  immense  power  in  the  community  for  valuable 
ends;  who  is  to  have  the  direction  of  the  forces  which  it  em- 
bodies?    Shall  we  allow  petty  scruples  to  throw  power  into 
the  hands  of  those  who  will  use  it  against  reason  and  freedom, 
or  shall  we  waive  questions  of  technical  honesty,  and  accom- 
plish good  by  accepting  conditions  as  they  stand?     Jowett's 
answer  is  made  easier  by  his  personal  temperament.    His  mind 
is  a  good  deal  of  the  type  of  Doctor  Johnson's,  for  whom  he 
had  a  great  admiration;  "common  sense"  is  his  final  court  of 
appeal.     This  is  the  outcome  of  his  long  wrestle  with  phi- 
losophy— the    conclusion    that    metaphysics    really    have    no 
standing.     "Common  sense  may  receive  a  slight  enlargement 
from  them,  and  indeed  some  knowledge  of  them  is  necessary 
to  enable  the  mind  to  get  rid  of  them.    But  I  think  the  vulgar 
are  right  in  regarding  them  as  a  forbidden  kind  of  knowledge 
which  is  of  most  use  after  it  has  been  forgotten." 

But  now  common  sense  often  means,  in  practice,  that  on 
which  the  great  majority  are  agreed;  and  accordingly  we  find 
Jowett  using  this  consciously  as  his  test  in  matters  of  con- 
duct as  well.    In  this  way  conformity  is  turned  into  something 


Benjamin  Jowett  12^ 

like  an  ideal  good;  "singularity  is  of  itself  an  evil."  Too 
much  enthusiasm  is  of  doubtful  benefit;  unworldliness  a  posi- 
tive vice.  One  of  the  great  truths  of  religion  is  "resignation 
to  the  general  fact  of  the  world  and  of  life";  and  under  title 
of  "the  world,"  Jowett  clearly  covers  something  of  what  the 
religious  mind  is  wont  to  call  the  "worldly."  It  follows  that 
we  may  easily  be  over-conscientious;  a  tender  conscience  is  a 
"conscience  unequal  to  the  struggles  of  life."  If  we  find  our- 
selves with  scruples  and  would  resolve  them,  Jowett  advises  us 
not  to  depend  too  much  upon  our  own  judgment,  but  to  look 
about  us  and  see  if  respectable  people  generally  are  troubled 
about  the  thing;  if  not,  we  are  only  making  ourselves  "singu- 
lar" by  raising  the  question.  And  for  common  sense  there  is  a 
further  test — success.  If  we  are  not  recognized  by  the  world 
there  must  be  something  lacking  in  us,  when  only  that  is  good 
which  is  generally  recognized  as  good.  "I  was  much  more 
pleased  with  him  than  I  expected  to  be,"  Jowett  writes  of  a 
man  he  had  recently  met,  "having,  you  know,  a  general 
prejudice  against  all  persons  who  do  not  succeed  in  the  world." 
Backed  by  this  philosophy,  Jowett  has  no  great  difficulty  in 
reconciling  himself  to  the  situation  in  the  English  Church.  It 
was  not  indeed  quite  an  atmosphere  of  frankness  and  openness; 
but  influence  is  worth  a  sacrifice.  And  if  one  needs  further 
justification,  it  is  comforting  to  reflect  that  one  does  not  stand 
alone.  Free-thinkers  are  not  more  nearly  touched  than  high 
Churchmen,  or  than  the  Evangelicals  by  the  Baptismal  Serv- 
ice; "though  I  dislike  Subscription,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that 
if  we  are  all  dishonest  together,  that  proves  us  to  be  all  honest 
together." 

8.  While  the  defenders  of  ecclesiasticism  on  the  one  hand, 
and  of  a  Coleridgian  spiritualism  on  the  other,  were  each  trying 
to  shape  Anglican  thought,  the  older  and  simpler  type  of 
rationalistic  or  semi-rationalistic  liberalism  was  never  without 
its  influence;  and  this  influence,  particularly  in  connection  with 
the  modification  of  views  about  inspiration  and  the  Scriptures, 


124       English  and  American  Philosophy 

began  in  the  latter  part  of  the  century  to  make  rapid  inroads 
upon  traditional  belief.  The  year  i860  saw  the  appearance 
of  a  cooperative  volume  entitled  Essays  and  Reviews,  which 
deserves  mention  as  marking  an  epoch  in  the  development  of 
religious  liberalism,  not  on  account  of  any  novelty  in  what  it 
had  to  say,  but  because  it  was  a  move  in  the  direction  of  break- 
ing up  the  general  conspiracy  of  evasiveness  and  timid  silence 
about  matters  of  scientific  criticism  long  since  taken  for 
granted  on  the  continent.  Of  the  writers,  three  in  particular 
gave  other  important  assistance  to  the  liberal  cause,  Jowett  by 
scholarly  contributions  to  the  historical  appreciation  of  New 
Testament  theology,  Baden  Powell  by  an  endeavor  to  rest 
religion  on  the  acceptance  of  scientific  law  rather  than  on 
miracle,  and  Mark  Pattison  by  numerous  essays  in  which  learn- 
ing and  an  open  mind  are  combined  with  literary  skill  of  a 
high  order. 

Of  somewhat  more  interest  for  philosophy  is  the  appearance 
here  and  there  of  a  spirit  of  rationalism  which  refused  to  re- 
main within  the  boundaries  even  of  a  liberalized  orthodoxy, 
and  which  issued  in  pure  theism,  or  in  a  combination  of  moral 
fervor  with  theological  agnosticism.  An  interesting  repre- 
sentative of  this  tendency  in  the  early  part  of  the  century  is 
Blanco  White.  Brought  up  to  become  a  priest  in  Catholic 
Spain,  and  sickened  by  contact  with  ecclesiastical  corruption 
and  superstition,  he  repudiated  his  vows  at  some  personal  risk 
and  fled  to  England,  where  he  became  a  force  of  importance 
in  the  current  of  free  opinion  that  was  beginning  to  stir  at  Ox- 
ford. White's  intellectual  history  is  a  chequered  one;  but 
after  passing  from  Catholicism  to  atheism,  and  thence  to  a 
moderate  Anglicanism,  he  finally  settled  down  as  a  Unitarian 
to  a  philosophical  theism  which  repudiated  authority  of  any 
sort,  and  reduced  Christianity  to  an  ideal  of  religious  liberty, 
under  acknowledgment  of  God  as  father,  and  of  conscience  as 
his  voice.  Another  thinker  of  the  same  general  temper  is 
Francis  W.  Newman,  a  brother  of  Cardinal  Newman.    New- 


The  Rationalists  125 

man  also  sets  aside  the  authority  of  creeds,  of  the  Church, 
of  the  Bible,  even  of  Christ;  it  is  impossible  to  build  a  religion 
of  authority  upon  free  inquiry.  God  is  left  the  central  article 
of  his  creed;  and  the  fruits  of  religion  depend  without  any 
mediation  whatever  on  the  heart's  belief  in  the  sympathy  of 
God  with  the  individual  man.  White  and  Newman  had  a 
follower  in  Frances  Power  Cobbe,  who  was  influenced  also 
by  the  American  Unitarian  leader,  Theodore  Parker.  In 
Parker,  and  in  his  friend  William  Henry  Channing,  a  similar 
form  of  rationalistic  theism  is  to  be  found,  Parker  being  rather 
the  more  radical  of  the  two. 

9.  Two  other  names  may  be  noticed  most  conveniently  in 
this  connection ;  both  made  their  mark  as  men  of  letters  rather 
than  as  theologians,  but  their  early  days  were  spent  in  the 
atmosphere  of  religious  controversy,  and  both  contributed  to 
the  literature  of  theological  unrest.  James  Anthony  Froude, 
the  historian,  was  a  brother  of  Hurrell  Froude,  and  had  himself 
been  implicated  for  a  time  in  the  Tractarian  Movement;  but 
he  soon  left  it  far  behind.  His  Nemesis  of  Faith  is  a  novel 
intended  to  show  the  danger  of  tying  up  religion  to  theological 
dogma.  Later  on  Froude  adopted  wholesale  the  moral  tran- 
scendentalism of  Carlyle,  but  succeeded  in  turning  it  into  a 
rather  commonplace  apology  for  taking  life  much  as  we  find 
it,  and  acquiescing  in  such  social  conventions  as  stand  in  good 
repute.  What  in  Carlyle  was  an  active  moral  call  upon  the 
possessor  of  preeminent  gifts  to  serve  his  fellows,  is  in  Froude 
hardly  more  than  a  worship  of  power  as  a  synonym  of  success, 
and  an  impatience  with  the  demands  of  the  imsuccessful ; 
while  the  Carlylese  distaste  for  the  critical  intellect  passes  into 
a  mere  instinctive  dislike  of  innovation. 

10.  In  Matthew  Arnold  there  is  a  far  more  genuine  and 
permanent  concern  for  the  religious  problem.  Arnold  indeed 
proved  to  be  one  of  the  most  powerful  of  the  influences  that 
helped  to  shape  the  form  of  liberal  religion  outside  the  bounds 
of  historical  Christianity.     As  a  poet  he  had  already  given 


126       English  and  American  Philosophy 

expression  to  the  sentimental  side  of  a  decaying  faith;  though 
it  is  clear  from  the  whole  tenor  of  his  mind,  a  mind  profoundly 
conservative,  and  sensitive  to  aesthetic  impressions  from  the 
heritage  of  the  past,  that  the  disappearance  of  familiar  land- 
marks, rather  than  any  deep  attachment  to  the  Christian 
belief  as  such,  was  the  source  of  his  melancholy.  Consequently 
there  is  no  occasion  for  surprise  if  in  the  prose  writings  which 
constitute  his  contributions  to  religious  thought  his  mood 
should  have  changed  completely,  with  no  trace  now  visible  of 
hesitation  or  regret. 

The  requirement  which  Arnold  makes  of  religion  is  that  it 
shall  be  a  matter  of  first-hand,  verifiable  experience.  The 
traditional  creed  of  Christianity  is  not  of  this  sort.  It  is  the 
product  partly  of  a  materialized  imagination  suited  to  our 
crude  personal  hopes  and  fears,  partly  of  metaphysical  reason- 
ings which  not  one  man  in  a  thousand  can  even  follow  intelli- 
gently, and  which  in  any  case  have  to  do  with  matters  totally 
incapable  of  proof.  God  as  a  moral  and  intelligent  Governor 
of  the  universe,  a  magnified  and  non-natural  man,  is  some- 
thing to  which  we  cannot  possibly  stand  in  any  experienced 
relation.  What  then  is  there  in  religion  which  is  the  object 
of  such  an  immediate  experience?  It  is,  says  Arnold,  the  cer- 
tainty that  righteousness  is  the  law  alike  of  our  own  being,  and 
of  the  world.  We  know  this  primarily  because  we  actually 
find  it  true  that  moral  conduct  brings  peace  and  happiness, 
whereas  unrighteousness  fails  of  its  desired  reward.  But  we 
also  know  that  this  is  no  mere  subjective  and  personal  fact, 
because  we  have  continual  evidence  how  little  our  happiness 
depends  upon  ourselves.  In  the  first  place  we  did  not  make 
ourselves;  we  did  not  bring  it  about  that  the  sense  of  suc- 
ceeding, going  right,  hitting  the  mark  in  conduct,  should  give 
satisfaction.  And  furthermore  our  performance  is  not  wholly 
or  even  nearly  wholly  in  our  own  power.  Our  conduct  is 
capable  of  almost  infinitely  different  degrees  of  force  and 
energy,  and  this  energy  springs  mysteriously  from  sources  back 


Matthew  Arnold  127 

of  our  conscious  and  voluntary  will.  To  put  ourselves  in  line 
then  with  this  law  of  the  universe,  to  attain  the  sense  of 
harmony  with  the  universal  order,  is  what  religion  calls  find- 
ing God.  For  religious  experience  God  is  simply  the  fact, 
independent  of  metaphysical  argument  or  of  popular  anthropo- 
morphism, that  there  are  fundamental  ethical  laws  which  rule 
our  lives.  God  is  the  Power  not  ourselves  that  makes  for 
righteousness,  the  stream  of  tendency  by  which  all  things 
strive  to  fulfil  the  law  of  their  being.  This  may  seem  to  be 
reducing  religion  to  morality;  in  a  sense  it  is,  in  so  far  as  the 
content  of  religion  goes.  But  there  is  a  real  difference  in  the 
way  in  which  this  content  makes  its  appeal  to  us;  religion  is 
morality  indeed,  but  morality  heightened,  enkindled,  lit  up  by 
feeling — morality  touched  by  emotion.  The  difference  is  better 
illustrated  than  defined.  "  'Hold  off  from  sensuality,*  says 
Cicero,  'for  if  you  have  given  yourself  up  to  it  you  will  find 
yourself  unable  to  think  of  anything  else.'  That  is  morality. 
'Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart,'  says  Jesus  Christ,  'for  they 
shall  see  God.'  This  is  religion.  'We  all  want  to  live  honestly, 
but  cannot,'  says  the  Greek  maxim  maker.  That  is  morality. 
'O  wretched  man  that  I  am,  who  shall  deliver  me  from  the 
body  of  this  death!'  says  St.  Paul.  That  is  religion.  'Love 
not  sleep,  lest  thou  come  to  poverty,'  is  morality;  but,  'My 
meat  is  to  do  the  will  of  him  who  sent  me,  and  to  finish  his 
work,'  is  religion." 


CHAPTER  IV 
NATURALISM  AND  EVOLUTION 

§  I.     Thomas  Buckle.    Darwin  and  Evolution 

I.  Even  while  the  prestige  of  John  Stuart  Mill  was  at  its 
height,  a  new  influence  was  already  making  itself  felt  in  the 
currents  of  naturalistic  thought  in  England — an  influence  only 
slightly  felt  by  Mill  himself — which  was  to  change  the  whole 
direction  and  emphasis  of  the  intellectual  life.  It  did  this  most 
directly  and  permanently,  of  course,  through  bringing  the 
notion  of  development  to  bear  upon  all  the  subjects  of  human 
inquiry;  but  also,  in  a  more  general  way,  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion signalized  a  certain  shift  of  interest  from  politics  and 
social  reform  to  the  objective  constitution  of  the  world  at 
large.  Even  before  the  vogue  of  evolution,  a  tendency  is 
apparent  here  and  there  to  turn  directly  to  the  impersonal 
truths  of  science  as  the  liberator  of  the  human  spirit  from 
the  trammels  of  superstition.  For  minds  in  rebellion  against 
current  theological  creeds,  it  is  not  difficult  to  understand  how 
the  notion  that  the  world,  and  man's  character  and  destiny 
as  a  portion  of  the  world,  are  ruled  by  Law,  might  come  to  take 
on  the  aspect  of  a  new  and  glorious  revelation.  The  earlier 
expressions  of  this  are  unimportant  for  philosophy,  and  amount 
to  little  more  than  a  glorification  in  one  form  or  another  of 
"necessity"  as  a  great  spiritual  principle.  If  one  wants  an 
illustration  of  the  almost  fanatical  enthusiasm  which  this  idea 
of  necessity  is  capable  of  arousing,  he  may  turn  to  the  pages 
of  Robert  Owen,  the  philanthropist  and  socialist.     Owen  is 

128 


Robert  Owen  129 

obsessed  with  the  notion  that  a  belief  in  free-will  is  the  grand 
source  of  all  evil,  and  that  such  a  belief  has  only  to  be  eradi- 
cated to  lay  a  secure  foundation  for  the  millenium.  Nature 
gives  to  each  man  his  necessary  constitution,  and  society  de- 
termines the  particular  form  this  is  to  take.  Once  recognize 
this,  and  straightway  it  will  "effectually  destroy  all  motives  to 
individual  pride  and  vanity."  No  one  versed  in  the  true 
knowledge  of  his  nature  will  think  more  highly  of  himself 
than  of  any  of  his  fellow  men;  selfishness  therefore  will  at 
once  disappear.  And  as  we  cannot  take  pride  in  ouiselves, 
so  we  have  no  logical  right  to  blame  others  for  what  they 
cannot  help.  Instead  of  the  impossible  attempt  to  combat 
crime  and  error  by  penalties,  it  will  be  recognized  that  society 
alone  is  responsible  for  the  aberration  of  individuals;  and  since 
we  are  thus  "at  the  mercy  of  society,'^  all  our  efforts  will  go 
to  the  endeavor  by  proper  social  conditions  to  create  a  new 
human  nature.  The  "various  phases  of  insanity  called  re- 
ligion," in  particular,  appear  to  Owen  as  among  the  chiefest 
sources  of  divisions  among  men.  "Rejoice,"  he  writes,  "all 
ye  who  have  so  long  desired  to  see  the  period  arrive  when  all 
the  human  race  shall  become  wise  and  good  in  habits:  for 
this  weapon  of  mighty  power  has  been  discovered!  Its  name 
is  TRUTH.  Its  sharpness  and  brilliancy,  now  that  it  is,  for 
the  first  time,  unsheathed  to  open  view,  no  mortal  can  with- 
stand." A  similarly  exaggerated  notion  of  the  practical  im- 
portance of  a  belief  in  necessitarianism  appears  in  a  more 
scientific  setting  in  Charles  Bray's  Philosophy  of  Necessity,  a 
well-meaning  piece  of  dogmatism  which  trails  off  into  a  defence 
of  phrenology,  and  a  vague  apotheosis  of  humanity  and  the 
social  whole.  A  better  known  writer,  though  scarcely  a  safer 
philosopher,  is  Harriet  Martineau,  whose  Letters  on  the  Law 
of  Human  Nature  and  Development  is  a  collection  of  the 
correspondence  between  herself  and  a  Mr.  Atkinson,  wherein 
the  two  authors  congratulate  one  another  on  their  superior 
attainments,  and  commiserate  a  world  not  yet  sufficiently  en- 


130       English  and  American  Philosophy 

lightened  to  appreciate  the  great  necessitarian  truths  of  ma- 
terialism and  phrenology. 

An  application  of  this  conception  of  necessary  law,  drawn 
from  the  sciences  of  physical  observation,  to  human  history 
on  a  large  scale,  is  attempted  with  results  more  pretentious 
than  successful  in  Thomas  Buckle's  famous  History  of  Civiliza- 
tion. The  influence  of  the  notion,  compounded  in  part  of  a 
faith  in  science,  and  in  part  of  aesthetic  sentiment,  of  a  great, 
iron-bound,  self-complete  universe  having  no  place  in  it  for 
the  free  play  of  human  will — a  single  scene  "permeated  by 
one  glorious  principle  of  universal  and  undeviating  regularity," 
— is  in  Buckle  complicated  by  his  disposition  to  look  upon 
law  as  an  actual  compelling  force  lurking  behind  the  facts, 
and  bending  to  its  will  the  feeble  powers  of  man.  Buckle 
was  especially  impressed  by  the  revelations  of  statistical  uni- 
formity. That  in  a  given  period  there  are  approximately  the 
same  number  of  suicides,  or  that  the  total  number  of  mar- 
riages seems  uninfluenced  by  the  uncertainties  of  individual 
love-making,  is  in  truth  a  curious  and  interesting  phenomenon, 
whose  explanation  is  not  wholly  on  the  surface.  To  Buckle, 
the  explanation  seemed  to  be  in  terms  of  the  utter  subordina- 
tion of  will  to  a  sort  of  physical  fate.  The  power  of  the 
larger  law,  he  says  in  speaking  of  suicide,  "is  so  irresistible, 
that  neither  the  love  of  life,  nor  the  fear  of  another  world, 
can  avail  anything  toward  even  checking  its  operation."  The 
ultimate  dependence  of  human  progress  on  the  physical  envi- 
ronment, more  particularly  on  the  great  factors  of  Climate, 
Food,  Soil,  and  the  General  Aspect  of  Nature,  is,  accordingly, 
his  primary  thesis.  One  of  the  deductions  from  this  is,  that 
in  a  country  subject  to  startling  vicissitudes  of  nature  a 
superstitious  habit  of  mind  is  bound  to  be  generated,  while 
science  and  reason  are  the  products  of  nature  in  a  form  more 
subdued  and  regular  in  its  processes.  So  likewise,  more  in- 
directly, the  development  of  reason  is  dependent  on  the  other 
physical  factors,  through  their  influence  on  the  accumulation 


Thames  Buckle  131 

of  wealth.  But  now  once  in  existence,  intellect  tends  more 
and  more  to  subdue  nature,  and  to  bring  about  a  growing 
preponderance  of  mental  over  physical  laws.  It  is  Buckle's 
special  interest  to  show  that  in  the  more  favored  and  pro- 
gressive countries  progress  depends  solely  on  intellect  or  sci- 
ence, and  not  on  moral  ideas,  which  last  remain  approximately 
constant.  The  advance  of  civilization  thus  varies  directly 
with  "scepticism,"  or  the  attitude  of  doubt  and  investigation, 
and  inversely  with  "credulity."  A  similar  but  far  less  able 
essay  at  a  deterministic  history  of  civilization  is  John  William 
Draper's  Intellectual  Development  of  Europe,  a  book  contain- 
ing a  great  mass  of  information,  not  always  well  understood 
by  the  writer,  but  negligible  as  a  contribution  to  science. 

2.  It  was  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species  which  opened  up  the 
possibility  of  a  final  triumph  of  science  over  religion,  and  the 
substitution  of  an  all-embracing  reign  of  impersonal  law  for 
supernatural  agency,  alike  by  the  new  prestige  which  it  lent 
to  the  pretensions  of  the  scientific  intellect,  and  by  the  weapons 
it  afforded  in  particular  against  the  two  main  foundations  of 
religious  belief — the  notion  of  design  in  nature,  and  the  con- 
ception of  man  as  a  being  possessed  of  a  spiritual  life  with 
little  or  no  point  of  contact  with  animal  existence.  The  idea 
that  species  have  arisen  by  a  gradual  process  was  of  course 
not  a  novel  one.  Darwin's  own  grandfather  had  suggested 
it;  and  more  recently  it  had  formed  the  burden  of  a  book 
called  Vestiges  of  Natural  Creation,  written  by  a  scientific 
amateur,  Robert  Chambers,  which  had  been  the  object  of  much 
discussion  on  its  appearance.  A  more  important  essay  in  the 
same  direction,  that  of  the  Frenchman  Lamarck,  who  had 
proposed  to  account  for  the  development  of  species  on  the 
theory  of  effort  exerted  to  satisfy  organic  appetencies,  and 
the  use  and  disuse  of  organs,  had  been  before  the  scientific 
world  for  several  decades.  But  while  the  more  open-minded 
scientists  were  not  unwilling  to  give  the  hypothesis  a  hearing, 
it  was  the  general  verdict  that  the  case  had  not  been  proven. 


132        English  and  American  Philosophy 

Darwin  was  successful  where  Lamarck  had  failed,  by  his 
empirical  evidence  that  in  Natural  Selection  we  have  a  vera 
causa  capable  of  explaining  at  least  a  part  of  the  effect.  Just 
how  great  a  part  this  particular  agency  plays  in  the  process 
of  evolution  Darwin  never  fully  convinced  even  himself.  In 
the  earliest  edition  of  the  Origin  of  Species  he  admits  that  it 
is  in  any  case  no  complete  explanation;  and  as  time  went  on 
he  was  inclined  to  allow  more  for  the  possible  importance  of 
cooperating  factors.  He  continued  to  believe  however  that 
as  compared  with  these,  natural  selection  held  at  least  the 
first  place. 

3.  The  prejudice,  at  the  start  the  overwhelming  prejudice, 
which  Darwin^s  theory  had  to  meet,  is  of  course  to  be  explained 
chiefly  by  the  consequences  it  was  seen  or  thought  to  have, 
and  in  particular  by  the  consequences  for  religion.  Whether 
these  consequences  really  follow  from  it  is  indeed  a  matter 
often  and  vigorously  disputed  in  the  immediately  succeeding 
decades;  but  at  first  glance,  at  any  rate,  there  appears  good 
ground  for  the  suspicion  that  it  undermines,  not  revelation 
merely,  but  the  whole  belief  in  the  existence  of  God  as  well, 
since  the  strongest  and  most  popular  argument  for  a  God 
has  always  started  from  that  evidence  of  design  in  the  world, 
the  organic  world  in  particular,  on  which  natural  selection 
seemed  to  cast  doubt.  Darwin's  own  judgment  was  fluctuat- 
ing. He  started  in  with  no  prejudice  against  theism.  As  a 
young  man  he  had  indeed  liked  the  idea  of  being  a  country 
clergyman,  and  had  seriously  considered  entering  the  Church; 
and  it  is  rather  curious  that  the  book  which  most  influenced 
him  in  his  early  days  was  the  one  that  did  most  to  popularize 
the  design  argument.  "I  do  not  think,"  he  says,  "I  hardly 
ever  admired  a  book  more  than  Paley's  Natural  Theology;  I 
could  almost  formerly  have  said  it  by  heart."  Nor  did  he 
ever  wholly  free  himself  from  the  force  of  the  impression 
which  the  world  gives  that,  in  view  of  the  remarkable  way  it 
has  turned  out,  it  must  bear  some  relation  to  intelligence  and 


Charles  Darwin  133 

meaning.  Thus  he  speaks  of  the  "extreme  difficulty  or  rather 
impossibility  of  conceiving  this  immense  and  wonderful  uni- 
verse, including  man  with  his  capacity  of  looking  far  back- 
wards and  far  into  futurity,  as  the  result  of  blind  chance  or 
necessity." 

But  with  time  this  feeling,  strong  when  he  wrote  the  Origin, 
tended  to  become  weaker.  The  more  we  give  our  attention 
to  the  details  of  the  evolutionary  process,  rather  than  to 
its  large  general  effects,  the  more  it  is  apt  to  appear  that  the 
natural  selection  of  fortuitous  variations  weakens  seriously  the 
force  of  the  supposition  that  intelligent  purpose  is  at  work; 
"there  seems  to  be  no  more  design  in  the  variability  of  organic 
beings  and  in  the  action  of  natural  selection,  than  in  the 
course  in  which  the  wind  blows.'^  Darwin  himself  appeals 
more  than  once  to  the  case  of  the  Vciriations  that  have  been 
utilized  by  man  in  artificial  selection,  as  indicating  a  clear 
lack  of  intention;  "it  seems  preposterous  that  a  maker  of  a 
universe  should  care  about  the  crop  of  a  pigeon  solely  to  please 
man's  silly  fancies."  A  further  and  more  positive  difficulty 
which  had  weight  with  him  is  the  difficulty  occasioned  by 
the  fact  of  evil.  The  success  of  natural  selection  depends  upon 
the  existence  of  an  enormous  amount  of  suffering;  and  to 
reconcile  this  with  a  good  and  benevolent  purpose  is  at  best 
an  act  of  faith.  To  Darwin  the  difficulty  was  the  more  real, 
in  that  he  was  susceptible  in  a  peculiar  degree  to  pity  for 
suffering  and  weakness.  His  sympathies  were  always  easily 
aroused,  as  is  witnessed,  for  example,  by  his  youthful  practice 
of  first  killing  worms  in  salt  water  before  impaling  them  on 
the  hook,  his  gradual  discontinuance  of  the  sport  of  hunting  of 
which  he  was  passionately  fond,  his  early  inability  to  stay 
out  hospital  oj>erations,  his  eager  partisanship  on  the  ques- 
tion of  slavery,  and  the  intensity  of  his  loathing  for  the  cruelty 
of  certain  vivisectors.  When  therefore  he  looked  to  nature, 
he  was  not  disposed  to  ignore  the  evidences  of  evil.  And 
although  he  held  strongly  to  a  belief  in  the  predominance  of 


134       English  and  American  Philosophy 

the  good,  he  found  this  more  compatible  with  a  theory  which 
made  pleasure  the  accompaniment  of  useful  adaptations,  so 
that  it  tends  by  the  blind  law  of  survival  to  become  the  rule 
of  life,  than  with  a  more  thoroughgoing  and  ultimate  theodicy. 

While  accordingly  Darwin  is  never  quite  ready  to  deny 
purpose  outright,  he  is  left  with  no  satisfactory  intellectual 
reasons  for  asserting  it.  To  accept  it  as  an  active  cause  for 
phenomena  in  detail  is  to  abandon  scientific  explanation,  and 
nothing  in  the  concrete  situation  seems  to  afford  a  necessity 
for  this;  while  if  one  falls  back  on  the  general  assumption 
that  everything  alike  in  the  end  may  have  been  designed  by 
God  for  the  purpose  which  it  actually  serves,  this  amounts 
only  to  saying  that  everything  is  determined  to  be  what  it  is. 
As  for  the  emotional  sense  of  a  divine  presence  at  certain 
exalted  moments,  Darwin  confesses  to  have  felt  it  at  times, 
but  it  gradually  left  him  with  his  growing  lack  of  susceptibility 
to  the  emotional  side  of  life.  There  still  remains  the  vague 
complex  of  feeling  and  reason  which  shows  itself  in  the  dis- 
satisfaction with  the  notion  of  an  unmeaning  universe.  But — 
and  this  is  Darwin's  last  word — here  also  evolution  bids  us 
halt,  and  the  "horrid  doubt  always  arises  whether  the  con- 
victions of  man's  mind,  which  has  been  developed  from  the 
mind  of  the  lower  animals,  are  of  any  value  or  at  all  trust- 
worthy." 

4.  Meanwhile  there  is  another  problem,  or  set  of  problems, 
growing  out  of  the  theory  of  evolution,  on  which  Darwin  was 
bound  to  have  something  more  definite  to  say.  Evolution 
may  seem  to  affect  our  estimate  not  of  God  only,  but  of  man 
as  well.  For  if  man  has  developed  from  the  brutes,  can  we 
still  suppose  him  possessed  of  those  distinctive  qualities  that 
have  been  held  to  constitute  his  peculiar  dignity  and  rank  in 
creation?  Of  such  qualities  there  are  two  of  chief  importance 
— reason,  and  conscience.  Man's  mental  powers,  if  indeed  he 
possesses  any  not  shared  with  the  brutes,  Darwin  finds  ex- 
plainable by  the  influence  of  speech  or  language.     Morality 


Charles  Darwin  135 

also  needs  no  generically  new  and  human  faculty.  Briefly, 
it  depends  on  two  things  in  particular,  the  sympathetic  in- 
stincts which  man  shares  with  the  lower  orders,  and  his 
greater  intellectual  power — helped  out  by  language — ^which 
enables  him  to  reflect  upon  past  actions  and  their  motives, 
approving  some  and  disapproving  others.  The  social  instincts 
lead  a  man  to  take  pleasure  in  the  society  of  his  fellows,  to 
feel  a  certain  amount  of  sympathy  with  them,  and  to  perform 
various  services  in  their  behalf.  Then  when  the  mental  fac- 
ulties have  become  sufficiently  developed  to  make  comparison 
possible,  images  of  past  actions  and  motives,  and  a  feeling  of 
dissatisfaction  such  as  always  results  from  an  unsatisfied  in- 
stinct, arise  in  us  when  we  perceive  that  this  enduring  and 
always  present  social  instinct  has  yielded  to  some  other, 
stronger  at  the  time,  but  neither  enduring  in  its  nature,  nor 
leaving  behind  a  very  vivid  impression.  Finally,  the  power 
of  language  being  acquired  so  that  the  wishes  of  the  com- 
munity can  be  expressed,  the  common  opinion  of  the  way  each 
member  ought  to  act  for  the  general  good  becomes  in  a  para- 
mount degree  the  guide  to  action,  in  the  form  of  a  desire  for 
social  approbation;  and  this  is  further  reinforced  by  habit. 


§  2.    Herbert  Spencer 

I.  The  conception  of  evolution  which  Darwin  had  been 
successful  in  making  for  the  first  time  a  real  scientific  issue 
in  the  biological  realm  had  already  taken  on  a  more  universal 
form,  even  before  the  Origin  of  Species  was  published,  in  the 
mind  of  Herbert  Spencer,  in  whose  Synthetic  Philosophy  we 
have  much  the  most  elaborate  and  thoroughgoing  expression 
of  nineteenth  century  naturalism.  Spencer's  naturalism  is,  in 
the  main,  a  lineal  descendent  of  the  older  English  tradition; 
but  it  has,  even  apart  from  the  modifications  due  to  the  notion 
of  development,  certain  individual  peculiarities.    Most  of  these 


136       English  and  American  Philosophy 

have  their  source  in  Spencer's  own  intellectual  and  moral 
temper.  In  tracing  his  genealogy,  Spencer  calls  attention  to 
the  spirit  of  non-conformism  prominent  in  his  ancestry;  and 
this  same  fondness  for  opinions  which  set  themselves  against 
authority  and  custom  was  everywhere  in  evidence  in  his  own 
character.  And  what  most  people  hold  in  a  verbal  and  in- 
nocuous way  was  with  him  a  rule  of  action.  He  disapproved 
of  funeral  ceremonies,  and  refused  therefore  on  principle  to 
attend  them.  He  did  not  believe*  in  the  display  of  a  monarch- 
ical government,  and  would  not  even  witness  street  parades 
connected  with  state  functions.  He  felt  a  strong  objection  to 
academic  degrees,  which  did  not,  after  the  usual  fashion, 
cease  when  he  had  himself  an  opportunity  to  receive  them. 
On  his  generally  unresponsive  habit  of  mind  toward  other 
people's  ideas,  and  his  unhesitating  readiness  to  air  his  dis- 
agreement, his  whole  life  is  a  commentary.  His  opinions — 
and  he  held  opinions  about  everything — he  was  constitutionally 
incapable  of  keeping  to  himself;  "whenever  I  see  what  seems 
to  me  an  evil,"  he  writes  a  friend  whom  he  is  instructing  in 
the  proper  way  to  bring  up  her  children,  "I  cannot  avoid 
trying  to  rectify  it.'^  He  had,  an  acquaintance  remarks  of 
him,  a  keener  desire  than  most  people  to  get  others  to  carry 
out  his  views  even  on  quite  trivial  subjects — how  to  light  a 
fire,  how  to  hang  pictures,  and  the  like;  and  his  strong  as- 
surance of  the  inherent  rightness  of  whatever  he  was  per- 
sonally convinced  of,  and  of  the  importance  to  the  world  that 
everyone  else  should  think  the  same  way  about  it,  was  apt  to 
lend  a  touch  of  intolerance  to  his  attitude.  Thus  he  refused 
to  give  his  support  to  the  new  philosophical  journal  Mind,  on 
the  ground  that  it  "cannot  be  expected  that  I  should  aid  the 
survival  of  a  periodical  so  largely  devoted  to  the  expression  of 
views  diametrically  opposed  to  my  own."  Whenever  in  par- 
ticular authorities  were  set  up,  Spencer  could  be  counted  on 
to  be  found  in  the  opposition;  witness  for  example  his  fre- 
quent disparagement  of  the  Old  Masters.     A  few  isolated 


Herbert  Spencer  137 

points  can  give  however  only  a  slight  glimpse  of  Spencer's  dis- 
tinctive character  as  it  stands  out  in  the  pages  of  his  Autobiog- 
raphy and  in  his  letters — an  upright,  self-reliant,  unsubmissive 
man,  with  no  reverence  in  his  composition,  ready  always  to 
stand  up  for  what  he  conceived  to  be  his  rights,  ambitious  intel- 
lectually and  with  a  keen  desire  for  fame  and  recognition,  but 
without  the  slightest  spirit  of  pretence  or  display,  sacrificing  for 
his  work  the  common  desire  of  getting  on  financially,  somewhat 
hard  and  implacable,  more  than  a  little  pedantic  and  old- 
maidish,  with  an  instinctive  love  for  the  orderly  and  patterned 
and  a  horror  of  confusion.  Of  his  naturally  equable  and  even 
stolid  temperament  one  may  perhaps  judge  from  the  anecdote 
which  he  thinks  it  worth  while  to  relate,  that  on  a  fishing 
trip  in  Scotland,  at  the  age  of  thirty-six,  he  became  provoked 
and  swore  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  being  reproved  therefor 
by  his  Scotch  companion.  Spencer  does  himself  fondly  imagine 
that  he  had  the  makings  of  a  rather  rash  and  venturesome 
character.  He  relates  two  or  three  incidents  in  his  life  very 
circumstantially  and  with  much  apparent  relish,  where  he 
seems  to  have  acted  without  entire  regard  for  consequences. 
But  the  surprise  that  he  displays,  and  his  labored  attempt  at 
explanation,  are  enough  to  show  that  of  the  real  spirit  of 
impulsiveness  he  had  not  the  least  conception. 

Philosophically  there  is  one  obvious  drawback  attaching  to 
Spencer's  non-conformist  temper,  and  his  inability  to  learn 
from  others.  He  confesses  that  he  practically  never  was  able 
to  read  a  book  with  whose  position  he  was  not  in  sympathy; 
and  the  result  is,  in  matters  that  lie  outside  the  field  of  science 
propter,  a  provincialism  which  materially  lessens  the  value  of 
his  conclusions.  The  very  nature  of  his  intellectual  life 
history  is  enough  to  arouse  serious  doubt.  Here  is  a  young 
man  who  finds  himself  holding,  rather  than  thinks  himself 
into,  a  certain — no  doubt  fruitful  and  valuable — conception. 
He  sits  down  to  work  it  out  as  a  philosophy,  and  for  over 
fifty  years  he  adds  one  volume  after  another.    Meanwhile  his 


138       English  and  American  Philosophy 

original  standpoint  never  alters.  He  gets  essentially  no 
modifying  light  upon  it,  meets  with  nothing  which  suggests 
to  him  that  it  may  not  be  wholly  adequate,  profits  scarcely  at 
all  from  criticisms  and  objections.  This  is  not  the  way  the 
most  comprehensive  wisdom  is  attained.  The  fundamental 
background  of  the  whole  conception  is  clearly  a  good  deal  a 
matter  of  temperament,  never  fully  and  candidly  scrutinized 
in  the  light  of  a  wider  human  nature;  and  it  is  impossible 
to  feel  entire  confidence  in  a  system  so  limited,  and  even 
dogmatic  in  its  form. 

2.  On  its  more  general  and  speculative  side,  Spencer's 
philosophy  starts  with  the  metaphysical  doctrine  of  the  un- 
knowableness  of  ultimate  reality.  The  thesis  itself  is  not 
novel;  in  one  form  or  other  it  has  indeed  appeared  as  the 
prevailing  note  in  both  the  main  lines  of  speculative  thought 
in  England  from  the  beginning  of  the  century.  Spencer  pro- 
fessedly takes  his  cue  from  Hamilton  and  Mansel,  and  repeats 
their  arguments  without  much  attempt  at  originality.  But  in 
doing  this  he  succeeds  in  bringing  out  even  more  sharply  than 
Hamilton  the  latent  difficulties  of  the  position.  For  while  he 
insists  that  we  can  prove  our  utter  incompetence  for  absolute 
knowledge,  it  yet  appears  that  the  notion  of  the  absolute 
remains  as  a  positive  content  in  our  thought,  and  that  we  are 
compelled  to  think,  or  to  hold  as  certain,  not  only  its  ex- 
istence, but  several  important  propositions  about  it.  It  is  true 
we  have  no  definite  idea  of  this  non-relative  being,  which 
nevertheless  by  our  mental  constitution  we  are  forced  to  postu- 
late; it  is  present  only  as  a  vague  and  indefinite  consciousness. 
But  we  do  not  rid  ourselves  of  the  contradiction  between  hav- 
ing and  at  the  same  time  not  having  an  idea,  by  making  the 
idea  very  indefinite  and  obscure.  And  if,  as  Spencer  urges, 
the  arguments  for  relativity  all  of  them  presuppose  an  absolute 
in  the  background,  the  proper  conclusion  would  seem  to  be, 
not  that  an  absolute  must  be  accepted  as  an  object  of  thought 


Herbert  Spencer  139 

by  a  being  who  is  incompetent  to  think  it,  but  that  our  argu- 
ments for  relativity  need  to  be  revised. 

It  would  however  probably  be  unjust  to  Spencer  to  take 
him  here  too  strictly  at  his  word,  and  to  conclude  that  because 
of  logical  complications  his  metaphysics  is  to  be  dismissed  as 
meaningless.  The  doctrine  of  the  Absolute,  if  one  be  disposed 
to  interpret  it  sympathetically,  contains  certain  elements  which 
are  more  or  less  independent  of  his  success  at  argument.  The 
things  which  it  would  appear  he  is  really  interested  in  uphold- 
ing are,  first,  the  perception  that  questions  about  the  intrinsic 
nature  of  reality  stand  on  a  different  footing  from  the  questions 
that  science  tries  to  answer,  and  cannot  be  met  on  the  same 
terms,  and,  second,  that  in  spite  of  this  we  are  constrained  to 
accept  beliefs  about  the  nature  of  the  world,  whether  or  not 
we  can  prove  them,  or  "know"  them  in  the  scientific  sense. 
Now  the  first  point,  quite  apart  from  Spencer's  labored  and 
generally  unconvincing  arguments  about  relativity,  might  be 
thought  to  follow  simply  from  a  description  of  what  scientific 
knowledge  for  him  consists  in.  It  is  a  knowledge,  namely,  of 
events,  or  phenomena,  and  reduces  itself  to  experienced  laws 
of  sequence.  In  the  nature  of  the  case,  then,  if  there  are  ex- 
istences or  entities  that  can  be  distinguished  from  their  hap- 
penings or  activities,  they  cannot  be  described  in  terms  of  the 
laws  of  invariable  sequence,  since  these  last  apply  to  nothing 
but  events,  or  changes.  It  does  not  follow  from  this  that  the 
nature  of  existence  is  necessarily  unintelligible.  If  we  agree 
to  call  nothing  science  unless  it  takes  the  form  of  a  statement 
about  the  ordered  occurrence  of  events,  and  regard  as  the  one 
test  of  science  the  experimental  test  of  finding  that  things 
happen  according  to  prediction,  then  there  can  be  no  scientific 
knowledge  of  anything  that  is  not  an  event;  but  it  is  at  least 
conceivable  that  knowledge  has  other  content  besides  these 
experimental  laws. 

And  whether  or  not  he  is  himself  ready  to  admit  it  in  words. 


140       English  and  American  Philosophy 

the  justification  of  such  elements  of  real  or  metaphysical  truth 
is  precisely  the  outcome  of  his  doctrine  of  the  Unknowable. 
Spencer's  dogged  assertion  of  the  real  existence  of  a  Power  or 
World  Energy  behind  the  phenomenal  show  of  the  evolutionary 
process  can  at  best  only  verbally  be  distinguished  from  a  bit 
of  absolute  knowledge.  This  confidence  in  an  objective  fact 
of  real  existence  more  fundamental  than  human  experience, 
and  than  the  phenomenal  sequences  which  science  formulates, 
is  what  enables  him,  even  though  it  is  with  some  loss  of  con- 
sistency, to  escape  from  the  thoroughgoing  unreality  doctrine 
which  his  principles  at  first  seem  to  suggest;  and  it  keeps  his 
general  philosophical  results  after  all  truer  to  our  common 
convictions  than  many  far  more  subtle  and  logically  consistent 
systems  which,  in  their  eagerness  to  avoid  "dualism,"  leave  in 
obscurity  the  relation  between  those  two  plain  facts  of  common 
experience — man  with  his  particular  fleeting  conscious  life, 
and  the  vast  mysterious  background  which  envelops  everything 
human,  which  was  when  man  was  not,  and  will  continue  to 
be  when  he  is  no  more. 

3.  Now  if  we  ignore  Sj>encer's  agnostic  implications,  it  is 
not  impossible  to  give  to  his  doctrine  of  relativity  an  in- 
terpretation which  relieves  it  of  some  of  its  more  obvious  diffi- 
culties. There  is  a  well-defined  and  quite  proper  sense  of 
knowledge — "knowledge  about,"  to  use  a  later  terminology,  as 
opposed  to  "acquaintance  with" — which  expressly  limits  itself 
to  acts  of  discrimination  from,  and  comparison  with,  other 
things.  In  this  sense  I  can  know  redness,  for  example,  as 
certainly  I  can  describe  it,  only  in  so  far  as  it  is  recognized 
as  standing  in  specific  relationships  to  other  colors,  or  to 
nervous  changes,  or  what  not.  It  is  true  that  in  another  mean- 
ing I  am  plainly  able  to  give  my  attention  to  qualitative  redness 
as  such;  and  if  there  were  not  direct  acquaintance  here  with 
some  elementary  sort  of  fact  not  dependent  cognitively  for 
its  nature  on  relations,  there  would  be  no  starting  point  for 
the  discovery  of  relational  connections.    But  it  may  be  agreed 


Herbert  Spencer  141 

that  such  knowledge  is  not  yet  "scientific."  Limiting  the  term 
to  the  discriminating  faculty  alone,  knowledge  then  is  relative 
in  the  quite  simple  sense,  not  that  it  is  produced  by  a  relation 
between  a  subject  and  an  object,  but  that  its  content  is  made 
up  of  the  perception  of  relationships. 

Even  if  we  were  to  stop  here,  there  is  nothing  to  make  it 
necessary  to  suppose  that  we  are  driven  to  agnosticism. 
Granted  that  the  content  of  knowledge  consists  of  relations, 
there  is  still  the  chance  that  these  relations  may  actually 
characterize  the  objective  universe,  so  that  in  knowing  them 
we  in  so  far  know  reality  truly.  The  only  thing  against  this 
is  the  prejudice  that  real  discriminations  cannot  enter  into 
true  being,  which  is,  instead,  a  blank  and  featureless  unity — ^a 
prejudice  which  as  a  matter  of  fact  Spencer  shares  with  Hamil- 
ton. But  it  has  no  particular  affinity  with  his  own  more 
scientific  interests.  And  in  spite  of  his  disclaimer,  it  would 
seem  that  he  really  must  suppose  that  the  relations  which 
our  thought  perceives  hold  good  to  an  extent  of  reality  also; 
if  we  take  literally  the  claim  that  while  force  actually  exists  it 
in  no  respect  resembles  what  the  human  mind  means  by  force, 
or  that  force  really  persists  unchanged  in  quantity  although 
"quantity"  has  no  place  in  real  existence,  or  that  relations  in 
our  experience  correspond  to  relations  in  the  real  world  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  nothing  we  know  as  relations  is  to  be 
found  there,  it  can  only  be  at  the  expense  of  leaving  our  words 
without  meaning. 

And  what  Spencer  chiefly  has  in  mind  when  he  asserts, 
as  against  Hamilton  and  Mansel,  that  the  absolute  is  a  positive 
conception  and  not  a  mere  negation  of  thought,  has  no  need 
to  be  inconsistent  with  this,  if  only  Spencer  would  allow  that, 
to  be  real,  a  thing  does  not  have  to  be  stripped  of  all  definite 
character.  The  simplest  interpretation  of  this  absolute  reality 
of  which  we  have  an  obscure  consciousness,  but  no  idea,  is  to 
think  of  it  as  constituting  that  backgroimd  of  existence-stuff 
on  which  specific  determinations  of  nature  or  character  are 


142        English  and  American  Philosophy 

written.  The  pure  logical  "nature"  of  things,  that  is,  it  is 
impossible  should  stand  alone;  there  is  in  experience  an  "ever- 
present  sense  of  real  existence,"  which  cannot  indeed  be 
"thought,"  since  we  are  now  abstracting  from  all  the  distinc- 
tions and  qualifying  adjectives  which  thinking  applies  to  it, 
but  which  can  nevertheless  be  pointed  to,  wordlessly,  as  that 
which  is  common  to  all  thoughts  or  experiences  alike  to  make  It 
possible  that  the  qualifications  should  be  there.  "Our  notion 
of  the  Limited  is  composed  firstly  of  a  consciousness  of  some 
kind  of  being,  and  secondly  a  consciousness  of  the  limits  under 
which  it  is  known.  In  the  antithetical  notion  of  the  Unlimited 
the  consciousness  of  limits  is  abolished,  but  not  the  conscious- 
ness of  some  kind  of  being."  Now  the  word  "limit"  might 
readily  suggest — and  Spencer  sometimes  utilizes  such  a  mean- 
ing for  his  argument — a  sort  of  boundary  line  between  ex- 
istence present  in  consciousness  and  reality  not  so  present,  a 
knowledge  of  this  boundary  implying  therefore  some  knowl- 
edge also  of  a  surrounding  territory.  This  interpretation  how- 
ever has  nothing  in  common  with  the  first  and  simpler  one; 
here  the  limit  is,  rather,  the  particular  "form"  under  which 
existence  appears,  and  the  absolute  is  the  "raw  material" 
worked  up  into  these  forms,  the  undifferentiated  substance  of 
consciousness,  the  sense  of  reality  dissociated  from  the  special 
shapes  which  it  assumes  in  "thought,"  the  indefinite  conscious- 
ness of  something  constant  under  all  modes  of  being  and  apart 
from  its  appearances.^ 

4.  Now  the  claim  that  thought  implies  existence  in  some 
sense  that  does  not  reduce  existence  to  a  mere  conceptual 
definition,  that  Being  is  not  simply  one  idea  among  others — a 
particularly  abstract  idea, — but  a  background  of  reality-stuff 
in  which  ideal  characters  and  relations  focus,  is  one  that  is 
deserving  of  more  attention  than  modern  philosophers  have 
usually  bestowed  upon  it.  It  however  falls  short  in  two  ways 
of  Spencer's  special  metaphysical  needs.     Such  an  absolute, 

^  First  Principles,  pp.  89,  ff.  (4th  Ed.,  N.  Y.,  1891). 


Herbert  Spencer  143 

as  there  has  already  been  occasion  to  remark,  is  "unknowable" 
only  on  the  assumption  that  we  can  separate  the  forms  that 
being  takes  from  its  raw  material  or  stuff,  and  that  this  last 
alone  truly  is,  though  without  being  anything  in  particular; 
and  taken  as  it  stands  it  is  at  least  equally  conceivable  that 
nothing  can  exist  without  a  specific  nature,  which,  therefore, 
truly  characterizes  it.  But  even  apart  from  this,  an  analysis 
of  consciousness  into  form  and  matter  will  in  any  case  fail  to 
carry  us  beyond  the  conscious  experience  itself;  whereas  for 
Spencer  the  Absolute  connotes  primarily  a  field  of  existence 
corresponding  to  the  ordinary  notion  of  an  independent  phys- 
ical world  on  which  the  conscious  life  is  causally  dependent. 
And  the  claim  that  thought,  or  experience,  implies  a  common 
stuff  of  reality  capable  of  being  felt  as  present  in  all  its  special 
embodiments — that  it  is  "impossible  these  conditions  or  limits 
can  be  thought  of  apart  from  something  to  which  they  give 
the  form" — is  different  from,  and  inconsistent  with,  the 
further  claim  that  we  are  obliged  to  think  of  a  Cause,  positive 
though  indefinite,  which  transcends  the  limit  of  our  thought, 
or  that  our  relative  experience  of  force  implies  an  absolute 
Force  by  which  we  are  acted  upon.  So  far,  the  indefinite 
"something"  which  the  analysis  has  given  us  is  simply  the 
aspect  of  feeling-existence  involved  in  every  fact  of  conscious- 
ness. And  in  turning  this  into  the  recognition  of  an  inde- 
pendent reality  standing  to  our  feelings  in  the  relation  of  cause, 
Spencer  is  not  only  abandoning  his  first  account  of  the  way 
in  which  the  absolute  is  "implied"  by  the  relative,  but  he  is 
explicitly  retaining  one  relation  at  least  as  constitutive  of  the 
nature  of  the  Absolute  itself.  Since  his  argument,  however, 
leaves  us  only  with  bare  Being  stripped  of  all  relationships 
whatever,  this  must  apply  equally  to  the  relationship  of  cause, 
which  we  have  no  right  accordingly  to  extrude  from  our 
conscious  experience  as  its  source.  For  Spencer's  purpose, 
therefore,  an  altogether  different  line  has  to  be  taken  when  it 
becomes  a  question,  not  now  of  defining  what  he  means  by 


144        English  and  American  Philosophy 

the  absolute  as  distinct  from  the  relative,  but  of  justifying  its 
existence  as  an  independent  Power.  This  is  the  argument  from 
the  Universal  Postulate,  issuing  in  the  doctrine  of  Transfigured 
Realism. 

5.  About  the  origin  of  the  ultimate  metaphysical  beliefs 
on  which,  for  Spencer,  our  possibilities  of  knowledge  rest,  his 
position  is  simple  and  straightforward.  He  holds  consistently 
that  they  are  implanted  in  us  by  the  evolutionary  process, 
which,  though  it  begins  with  particular  experiences,  has  made 
their  results  hereditary  in  the  course  of  generations,  so  that 
now  an  organism  is  born  with  certain  truths  or  forms  of 
thought  ready  to  function  at  the  start;  it  is  thus  that  he  con- 
siders he  has  reconciled  the  opposing  schools  of  the  empiricist 
and  the  intuitionalist.  The  logical  justification  of  these  truths, 
however,  is  more  obscure.  For  the  most  part,  Spencer  rests 
it  on  a  criterion  which  he  calls  the  Universal  Postulate.  We 
accept  the  beliefs,  namely,  on  the  ground  that  their  opposite 
is  inconceivable;  when  we  endeavor  to  set  such  an  opposing 
proposition  before  the  mind's  eye,  we  discover  that  its  terms 
cannot  by  any  possibility  be  united  in  thought. 

To  this  criterion  one  obvious  objection  appears.  In  some  at 
least  of  Spencer's  illustrations  it  is  very  questionable  whether 
as  a  matter  of  fact  the  inconceivability  really  exists.  Take, 
for  example,  the  dogma  of  the  indestructibility  of  matter;  some 
philosophers  have  thought  they  found  no  trouble  in  conceiv- 
ing that  this  may  not  be  true,  and  the  majority  of  mankind 
has  actually  disbelieved  it  in  the  past.  To  the  modem  scientist 
it  may  indeed  appear  incredible  that  matter  should  be  de- 
stroyed; but  there  is  another  and  easier  interpretation  of  the 
source  of  this  conviction.  We  may  mean,  namely,  that  the  pos- 
sibility cannot  be  believed  unless  we  are  ready  to  give  up  the 
whole  system  of  accepted  knowledge;  remove  the  assumption, 
and  the  fabric  of  belief  which  has  been  built  around  it  by  man's 
intellectual  efforts  will  collapse.  On  this  showing,  however,  the 
certainty  lies  not  in  any  single  truth,  but  rather  in  the  massive 


Herbert  Spencer  145 

appeal  of  the  concrete  body  of  settled  opinion,  dependent  on 
innumerable  facts  of  experience  with  their  multiform  avenues  of 
access  to  our  being.  And  for  such  an  interpretation,  the  other 
side  of  Spencer's  doctrine  also — the  origin  through  evolution — 
becomes  a  real  part  of  the  situation,  instead  of  a  logical  irrele- 
vance. If  the  conviction  depends  for  its  force  upon  the  in- 
timacy of  its  connection  with  the  total  intellectual  world  struc- 
ture, then  the  recognition  that  the  last  word  of  systematized 
human  belief — the  doctrine  of  evolution — substantiates  it,  in 
that  if  evolution  be  true  we  should  expect  it  to  have  brought 
about  certain  ways  of  thinking  consistent — or  they  could  not 
have  survived — with  the  nature  of  reality,  is  an  added  ground 
of  rational  confidence  in  the  postulate  we  have  been  using. 
And  this  second  interpretation,  according  to  which  we  assume 
a  principle  as  true  provisionally,  and  establish  it  by  showing 
its  congruity  with  all  other  beliefs,  Spencer  also  occasionally 
adopts;  though  if  taken  seriously  it  would  change  the  whole 
complexion  of  his  doctrine  of  the  Universal  Postulate. 

The  ambiguity  here  is  explained  in  part  by  the  fact  that 
there  are  certainties  of  two  different  sorts  which  Spencer  lumj>s 
together.  I  perceive,  for  example,  that  I  have  at  a  given  mo- 
ment a  particular  kind  of  feeling,  or  that  the  lines  which  I 
envisage  together  are  unequal ;  so  long  as  the  truth  depends  on 
the  positive  nature  of  such  a  directly  apprehended  fact  or 
relation,  it  is  intelligible  to  say  that  I  can  convince  myself  of 
the  "certainty"  which  is  a  psychological  accompaniment  of  the 
truth — though  not  the  truth  itself — by  attempting  to  com- 
bine it  with  its  opposite,  and  failing  in  the  attempt.  I  fail 
because  when  I  am  intuiting  something  real  and  immediately 
present,  I  cannot  possibly  assent  to  what  denies  it.  But  there 
are  other  beliefs,  about  which  I  may  in  a  practical  way  be 
almost  as  certain,  which  are  not  of  this  sort,  because  the  con- 
nection of  ideas  which  the  denial  involves  are  not  contradic- 
tories. Thus  if  I  experience  a  sequence  of  events  a  and  b,  I 
should  contradict  myself  if  I  held  that  it  was  not  this  sequence, 


146        English  and  American  Philosophy 

but  something  different;  but  there  would  be  no  contradiction 
were  I  to  suppose  that  on  another  occasion  a  might  be  fol- 
lowed by  c  instead,  even  though  everything  else  were  constant. 
And  yet  I  am  confident  that  this  will  not  be  so,  and  that  xmi- 
formity  in  nature  can  be  relied  on. 

6.  Meanwhile  it  is  to  beliefs  of  this  second  sort  that  the 
Universal  Postulate  in  Spencer's  hands  is  chiefly  intended  to 
apply,  and  in  particular  to  the  ones  with  which  we  are  here 
specially  concerned — the  belief  in  the  persistence  of  Force 
which  is  to  be  the  key  for  unlocking  the  mysteries  of  the  evolu- 
tionary process,  and  the  realistic  belief  in  an  existence  inde- 
pendent of  our  conscious  life.  Spencer  is  creditably  explicit  in 
maintaining,  against  the  idealistic  disposition  to  evade  the 
issue,  the  real  existence  of  Being  more  ultimate  than  anything 
that  can  be  identified  as  present  in  our  conscious  states.  It  is 
true  he  does  not  always  quite  live  up  to  this;  the  endeavor, 
particularly  in  the  First  Principles,  to  state  the  distinction  be- 
tween subject  and  object  as  a  difference  between  faint  and 
vivid  states  of  consciousness,  comes  very  dose  to  subjectivism. 
But  his  actual  use  of  the  distinction,  especially  in  the  Psychol- 
ogy, gives  it  a  definitely  realistic  turn;  sensations,  or  vivid 
states,  instead  of  being  identified  with  the  objective  world,  are 
recognized  as,  equally  with  ideas,  belonging  to  the  subject, 
their  closer  connection  with  the  notion  of  external  existence 
meaning  only  that  they  are  more  directly  an  expression  of 
the  ultimate  Force  constituting  the  reality  back  of  physical 
nature.  It  is  this  reference  to  an  unknown  Power  which  now 
plays  the  leading  part  in  the  definition  of  the  "object" — a 
Power  beyond  consciousness  on  which  our  sensations  depend, 
and  which  we  are  led  to  think  of  "symbolically"  in  terms  of 
the  experience  of  force  that  attends  the  exercise  of  our  own 
activity.^ 

When  we  turn  to  details,  however,  a  number  of  doubtful 
issues  are  raised.     That  there  is  something  which  stands  in 

^Ihid.,  pp.   iS4  ff.;  Psychology,  Vol.  II,  Pt.  VII,  Chaps.   18-19. 


Herbert  Spencer  147 

relation  to  our  human  energies,  and  which  is  able  to  initiate 
changes  in  us,  is  indeed  a  ver>'  persistent  and  universal  human 
belief;  but  its  connection  with  the  Universal  Postulate  is  less 
easy  to  make  out.  Spencer's  argument  implies  the  existence 
of  an  indissoluble  cohesion  between  sensations  and  an  in- 
definite consciousness  that  stands  for  a  mode  of  being  beyond 
consciousness;  but  the  ground  for  this  necessity  is  far  from 
clear.  In  the  first  place,  Spencer  leaves  his  notion  of  this 
Absolute — when  we  rule  out  the  former  definition,  which  is 
irrelevant  to  an  absolute  "cause" — entirely  without  any  con- 
tent with  which  an  association  could  be  set  up;  and  even  if 
we  were  to  grant  that  it  has  a  content,  its  connection  with 
sensation  would  still  lack  that  inevitability  which  the  Postulate 
demands.  Theoretically  it  is  quite  possible  to  think  sensation 
apart  from  an  external  source,  as  is  evidenced  by  the  popu- 
larity of  an  idealistic  h5rpothesis  among  philosophers  as  log- 
ically competent  as  Spencer  himself.  Other  difficulties  suggest 
themselves  when  we  try  to  construe  intelligibly  the  relation  of 
the  conscious  fact,  alike  to  the  Power  of  which  it  is  a  mani- 
festation, and  to  the  bodily  structure  with  which  it  is  corre- 
lated. At  one  time  Spencer  was  disposed  to  think  of  mind  and 
nervous  process  as  both  in  the  same  scientific  sense  manifesta- 
tions of  energy,  and  capable,  like  heat  and  motion,  of  being 
transformed  one  into  the  other.  On  reflection  he  came  to  see 
the  lack  of  evidence  for  this,  or  even  of  any  precise  scientific 
meaning;  though  he  continues  in  some  vague  and  undefined 
sense  to  call  them  appearances  of  the  same  unknown  Power. 
While  however  a  physical  fact  may  in  an  intelligible  sense  be 
reduced  to  a  "phenomenon,"  if  there  is  presupposed  a  conscious 
mind  to  which  it  can  appear,  the  term  does  not  fit  so  readily 
the  conscious  fact  itself.  A  sensation,  if  it  is  anything  dis- 
tinctive at  all,  is  for  the  moment  at  least  real  just  as  it  stands, 
whatever  more  in  the  way  of  reality  there  may  be.  Spencer 
may  think  that  he  had  evaded  the  difficulty  by  his  definition 
of  the  real  as  "that  which  persists."    But  this  is  a  definition  of 


148       English  and  American  Philosophy 

permanent  existence,  not  of  existence  as  such;  and  it  does  not 
preclude  the  possibility  that  transitory  being  may  also  be  real 
so  long  as  it  lasts,  and  not  mere  illusory  appearance.  And  if 
we  once  recognize  that  sensation  can  be  called  appearance  only 
at  best  in  the  sense  that  it  is  partial  and  transitory,  and  not 
that  it  is  unreal,  it  ceases  to  stand  on  the  same  level  with  mat- 
ter; and  to  speak  of  the  two  as  different  aspects  of  the  unknown 
reality,  or  of  consciousness  as  the  opposite  "side"  of  matter, 
is  to  fall  back  on  a  metaphor  to  which  no  distinct  idea  cor- 
responds. Indeed  if  we  are  to  take  seriously  the  assertion  that 
phenomenal  matter,  as  a  "vivid"  state  of  consciousness,  is  still 
a  state  of  the  ego,  there  is  no  double  aspect  even,  but  only  a 
single  manifestation  of  reality  in  the  form  of  consciousness, 
if  this  be  a  "manifestation"  at  all. 

7.  So  far  the  notion  of  evolution  has  played  no  conspicu- 
ous part  in  Spencer's  metaphysics,  except  as  indirectly  it  has 
supplied  a  way  of  reconciling  the  experience  philosophy  with 
intuitionalism;  and  even  this  is  a  doctrine  whose  metaphysical 
importance  it  would  be  easy  to  exaggerate.  In  so  far  as  an 
inherited  tendency  takes  the  form  of  a  disposition  to  repeat,  or 
to  expect  the  repetition  of,  a  sequence  in  experience,  the  ex- 
planation is  plausible;  but  there  are  other  cases  where  its  ap- 
plication is  more  obscure.  Thus  when  a  mathematician  dis- 
covers a  novel  and  necessary  truth  in  his  science,  there  is  no 
obvious  way  of  deriving  his  certainty  from  his  ancestors,  unless 
they  were  better  mathematicians  than  we  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  believe.  In  any  case,  however,  the  epistemological 
value  of  the  sort  of  belief  that  Spencer  wants  to  justify  lies 
not  in  its  natural  history,  but  in  its  present  force  and  com- 
pulsion. We  do  not  believe  it  because  we  know  that  it  has 
been  brought  about  by  natural  selection,  though  this  when 
recognized  may  add  to  its  prestige;  we  should  never  have  been 
put  in  the  way  of  constructing  a  theory  of  its  evolutionary  his- 
tory had  we  not  already  accepted  it  and  trusted  it. 


Herbert  Spencer  149 

The  real  interest  of  Spencer's  system  for  all  except  a  hand- 
ful of  readers  only  begins  when  he  turns  from  his  theory  of 
the  Absolute  to  a  concrete  survey  of  the  world  of  changing  phe- 
nomena, and  puts  into  actual  operation  the  method  of  scientific 
generalization  which  he  professes  to  identity  with  the  possi- 
bility of  valid  thinking.  It  is  already  apparent  that  he  is  far 
from  living  up  to  this  method  in  his  more  metaphysical  moods. 
Even  his  theory  of  evolution  is  in  two  important  ways  a  cre- 
ation of  metaphysics  rather  than  of  science;  not  only  does  the 
concrete  knowledge  which  it  presupposes  imply  original  pos- 
tulates that  are  not  scientific  matters  of  fact,  but  the  deduc- 
tive justification  which  Spencer  tries  to  give  his  evolutionary 
formula  precedes  logically,  rather  than  is  derived  from,  the 
formula  itself.  This  a  priori  standpoint  it  is  difficult  at  times 
to  disentangle  from  his  treatment  of  questions  of  detail,  even 
when  he  supposes  himself  to  be  on  the  safe  ground  of  science; 
and  it  is  responsible  for  some  of  the  more  unconvincing  aspects 
of  his  philosophy.  But  primarily  evolution  is  for  him  the  out- 
come of  an  inductive  inquiry;  and  as  such  its  evidence  is  largely 
independent  of  his  theory  of  relativity,  and  of  the  unknowable. 

With  Lamarckianism  Spencer  had  come  in  contact  through 
reading  a  book  intended  to  controvert  it;  but  his  symj>athy 
remained  rather  with  the  view  he  found  criticized.  The  rea- 
son was  not  that  he  had  any  special  competency  to  solve  the 
biological  problem,  or  that  he  was  able  to  meet  the  objections 
which  biologists  generally  had  felt  to  lie  in  the  way  of  La- 
marck's theory;  with  his  usual  preference  for  reaching  large 
conclusions  first,  and  then  backing  them  up  by  evidence,  it 
became  clear  to  him  that  species  must  have  been  evolved,  be- 
cause the  only  other  alternative  was  the  inadmissible  one  of 
special  creation.  And  now  with  the  idea  once  implanted  in  his 
mind,  he  was  not  content  to  limit  it  to  biology;  instinctively 
he  began  to  universalize  it.  The  task  of  finding  a  formula  to 
express  the  new  insight  proved  a  laborious  one;  but  at  last 


150        English  and  American  Philosophy 

the  famous  Spencerian  definition  of  evolution  was  evolved, 
2Lnd  the  remainder  of  his  life  was  devoted  to  its  exploitation  in 
the  various  fields  of  human  knowledge. 

8.  There  is  a  side  from  which  this  definition  is  bound  to 
appear  pretentious  as  a  claim  to  stand  for  a  final  philosophy. 
To  suppose  that  the  universe  has  been  accounted  for  when  you 
have  said  that  things  are  all  the  time  growing  more  complex 
and  more  unified  is  to  have  a  limited  notion  of  the  philosopher's 
task.  The  recognition  of  development  is  clearly  compatible 
with  a  great  variety  of  opposing  philosophies.  This  is  not  to 
deny  the  value  of  Spencer's  work.  While  development  does 
not  settle  the  problems  of  philosophy,  it  does  often  change 
their  face ;  and  no  question  perhaps  can  be  settled  finally  with- 
out reference  to  it.  Spencer  was  largely  influential  in  making 
the  idea  a  power  in  modern  thought.  Had  it  not  been  for  the 
reinforcement  that  came  from  Darwin's  application  of  the 
idea  to  a  particular  scientific  problem,  it  is  not  certain  how  far 
he  would  have  succeeded.  But  he  was  lucky  in  becoming 
possessed  of  the  conception  just  at  the  moment  when  forces 
were  preparing  in  the  intellectual  world  for  its  favorable  re- 
ception. And  the  impression  he  was  able  to  make  was  vastly 
increased  by  the  really  remarkable  fertility  which  he  showed 
in  applying  it  to  problems  of  concrete  interest.  No  man  of 
his  generation,  or  perhaps  of  his  century,  started  a  greater 
number  of  fruitful  scientific  theories  in  the  most  varied  fields. 
Most  of  these  theories  would  now  be  recognized  as  at  best 
very  partial.  Spencer  was  much  too  disposed  to  be  satisfied 
with  logically  simple  explanations,  more  in  accord  wiih  the 
deductive  demands  of  his  system  than  with  the  complexity  of 
the  facts.  But  his  suggestions  had  the  merit  of  openmg  up 
inquiry  along  many  lines  that  have  led  to  permanent  and 
valuable  results. 

9.  Apart  from  deficiencies  in  its  application,  there  are  to 
be  noted  also  certain  debatable  characteristics  in  the  concept 
of  evolution  itself  as  Spencer  understands  it.     One  comment 


Herbert  Spencer  151 

which  it  calls  for  at  the  start  has  to  do  with  the  whole  ideal  of 
method  which  it  implies.  There  are  obvious  limitations  to  an 
explanation  that  takes  the  form  of  abstract  generalization.  In 
fact  this  is  not  explanation  at  all,  in  the  sense  in  which  Dar- 
win's theory  of  natural  selection  is  an  explanation;  and  if  we 
are  tempted  to  take  it  as  such,  it  suggests  almost  irresistibly 
an  emphasis  which  is  by  no  means  self-evidently  true,  and 
which,  if  it  is  once  assumed  without  clear  justification  from 
the  facts,  will  inevitably  lead  us  astray  on  matters  of  im- 
portance. A  law,  as  Spencer  thinks  of  it,  is  obtained  by  drop- 
ping out  all  differences  as  unessential,  and  retaining  only  the 
common  elements.  But  now  if  we  regard  this  also  as  an  ac- 
count of  how  things  actually  came  about,  the  problem  arises 
of  getting  the  differences  we  have  ignored  back  into  the  world 
again.  And  if  all  we  have  to  work  with  is  an  exceedingly 
simplified  physical  situation  such  as  science  reveals  to  us  when 
we  trace  the  universe  back  in  time  as  far  as  we  can  go,  and  an 
exceedingly  abstract  formula  of  the  process  of  succeeding 
change,  we  are  led  naturally  to  the  conclusion  that  the  later 
stages  are  reducible  in  their  essential  elements  to  the  earlier. 
Instead  of  setting  out  to  interpret  reality,  as  is  at  least  con- 
ceivably the  proper  way,  by  examining  the  outcome,  and  de- 
fining reality  as  the  sort  of  affair  that  is  capable  of  issuing  in 
these  results,  we  look  rather  to  the  beginning,  and  argue  that 
if  what  we  find  there  seems  to  be  too  simple  to  account  for 
later  facts,  the  appearance  of  novelty  must  be  an  illusion. 

It  is  this  latter  attitude  which  Spencer  himself  adopts.  His 
main  intellectual  interest  lies  in  reducing  the  new  to  the  old, 
and  in  explaining  apparent  advance  in  terms  of  what  some- 
how has  been  there  all  the  time.  But  if  this  be  taken  strictly, 
it  empties  the  term  evolution  of  the  distinctive  meaning  which 
it  conveys  to  the  popular  imagination,  and  it  becomes,  as 
Spencer's  definition  suggests,  no  more  than  a  constant  re- 
shuffling of  unchanging  elements.  These  may  attain  to  more 
complex  and  intricate  groupings ;  but  a  difference  in  the  group- 


^— 


152       English  and  American  Philosophy 

ing  of  elements  is  nevertheless  the  whole  story.  There  is  no 
genuine  element  of  novelty  anywhere  injected;  no  surprises  can 
ever  be  sprung  on  the  world.  This  tendency  to  minimize  the 
importance  of  differences  is  one,  and  perhaps  the  main  oc- 
casion, why  the  results  of  naturalism  seem  so  often  to  be  hos- 
tile to  the  spiritual  life.  The  human  interest  is  otherwise;  if 
science  wants  to  find  the  beginnings  of  conscience,  say,  in 
the  brutes,  morality  is  chiefly  concerned  for  just  those  later 
refinements  that  distinguish  brutes  from  men.  So  in  the  so- 
ciological field,  this  predilection  shows  in  Spencer's  constant 
minimizing  of  man  as  an  active  agent,  in  his  resort  to  the 
environment  and  its  eternal  laws — man's  own  nature  is  of 
course  one  of  the  products  of  the  past  working  of  these  laws 
— to  account  for  human  changes,  and  in  his  reluctance  to  allow 
us  to  call  upon  personal  initiative  and  ingenuity  to  shape  the 
world  into  courses  unpredictable  in  terms  simply  of  the  past. 
Everything  in  conduct  is  to  be  explained  by  "incident  forces" 
that  rain  in  upon  us  from  the  surroundings,  and  gradually 
shape  the  organism  into  harmony  with  themselves;  and  what- 
soever is  more  than  this  cometh  of  evil. 

The  difficulties  which  such  an  evolutionary  ideal  has  to  meet 
were  never  strongly  enough  felt  by  Spencer  to  impair  the  con- 
fidence he  reposed  in  his  formula,  or  to  lead  him  to  go  to  very 
much  trouble  to  obviate  them;  but  it  is  clear  that  difficulties 
exist.  We  find  it  hardest  to  avoid  admitting  differences  of 
quality,  as  well  as  of  complexity,  in  the  realm  of  conscious  phe- 
nomena. To  say  nothing  of  such  facts  as  morality,  and  art, 
and  certain  aspects  of  the  life  of  reason,  where  our  natural 
tendency  is  to  think  that  we  discover  genuine  new  qualities 
of  experience,  the  mere  existence  of  sensations  puts  a  strain 
upon  the  attempt  to  reduce  all  change  to  the  redistribution  of 
matter  and  motion.  Sensational  qualities,  like  redness  and 
sweetness  and  painfulness,  have  all  the  marks  of  being  novel- 
ties incapable  of  being  stated  in  terms  of  what  precedes  their  ap- 
pearance in  human  feeling.    And  here  for  once  Spencer  him- 


Herbert  Spencer  153 

self  tacitly  admits  a  break  in  the  continuity  of  the  evolutionary 
process;  he  allows,  and  even  asserts,  that  the  conscious  fact 
cannot  by  any  possibility  be  reduced  to  matter.  But  his 
emphasis  on  this  is  clearly  due  to  his  metaphysical,  rather  than 
to  his  evolutionary  interest;  and  when  he  turns  to  the  his- 
torical problem  of  the  origin  of  consciousness,  the  whole  effort 
is  to  minimize  the  difference.  Consciousness,  in  Spencer's 
analysis,  is  more  and  more  refined,  more  and  more  simplified, 
till  it  reaches  the  attenuated  form  of  a  momentary  psychical 
"shock."  ^  Within  the  conscious  realm  therefore,  at  any  rate, 
qualitative  differences  can  all  be  explained  away ;  the  seemingly 
ultimate  distinctions  between  red  and  green,  sound  and  taste, 
sensation  and  relation,  are  illusory,  to  be  accounted  for  by 
the  greater  or  less  complexity  of  the  combinations  into  which 
these  simple  units  enter.  It  is  true  that  one  thing  still  re- 
mains to  trouble  the  unity  of  our  system — the  psychic  shock 
itself.  But  since  this  is  near  enough  like  a  physical  shock 
to  go  by  the  same  name,  Spencer  seems  to  think  that  it  is 
not  necessary  to  make  a  fuss  about  it;  there  is  such  a  slight 
difference  between  a  little  difference  and  no  difference  at  all, 
that  apparently  we  can  afford  to  overlook  quibbles  about  the 
law  of  contradiction.  Indeed  were  it  not  for  his  disclaimer, 
the  reader  would  certainly  get  the  impression  at  times — in 
the  chapter  on  the  Nature  of  Intelligence  in  particular — that 
the  difference  has  entirely  disappeared,  and  that  we  are  being 
shown  how  psychical  changes  "merge  into  those  which  we  dis- 
tinguish as  physical,"  and  arise  from  them  by  a  process  of 
gradual  differentiation. 

10.  Any  attempt  to  cover  the  entire  ground  of  Spencer's 
evolutionary  philosophy  would  of  necessity  have  to  take  the 
form  of  a  mere  catalog;  it  will  be  enough  to  pick  out  certain 
of  its  more  outstanding  features,  especially  such  as  emphasize 
the  speculative  demands  of  his  system  rather  than  the  mere 
leading  of  facts.    On  the  whole,  as  has  been  implied,  Spencer 

^  Psychology y  Vol.  I,  Pt.  II,  Chap.  i. 


154       English  and  American  Philosophy 

is  more  vulnerable  as  a  deductive  than  as  an  empirical  philoso- 
pher. The  evolutionary  formula  itself,  it  is  safe  to  say,  would 
have  won  very  little  acceptance  had  its  evidence  rested  on 
Spencer's  derivation  of  it  as  a  necessity  of  thought;  indeed 
it  is  a  rather  amazing  example  of  speculative  self-confidence, 
even  among  philosophers,  that  anyone  should  have  been  able 
to  convince  himself  that  the  whole  necessary  course  of  cosmic 
development  is  predictable  from  the  bare  proposition  that 
energy  persists.  So  also  the  more  directly  speculative  aspects 
within  the  process  are  derived  from  its  general  principles,  the 
safer  one  usually  is  in  viewing  them  with  some  suspicion. 
And  this  is  notably  true  of  the  application  of  the  idea  of  evolu- 
tion to  the  life  of  man,  and  to  ethical  and  social  values. 

II.     Spencer's  ethics  is,  in  the  large,  an  attempt  to  impart  to 

Utilitarian  hedonism  a  scientific  and  deductive  character,  and 

to  rescue  it  from  mere  empiricism.    His  method  of  doing  this 

involves  a  double  meaning  of  the  term  "good."     From  the 

standpoint  of  objective  science,  to  begin  with,  a  thing  is  good 

when  it  serves  a  required  end.     Now  the  end,  in  biological 

terms,  of  the  human  organism  is  self-preservation,  or  equilib- 

1  rium,  or  adjustment  to  the  conditions  of  the  environment. 

I  We  have,  accordingly,  a  biological  test  of  good  conduct  which 

\  is  independent  of  the  vagaries  of  individual  judgment,  and  is 

i capable  of  receiving  a  precise  scientific  statement. 

It  is  this  first  conception  of  the  good  which  furnishes  the 
guiding  clue  to  what  is  most  characteristic  in  Spencer's  ethical 
doctrine;  and  it  suggests  several  queries.  It  is  worth  while 
noticing,  to  begin  with,  a  certain  assumption  which  it  involves 
in  Spencer's  hands — one  so  congenial  to  his  temperament  that 
he  overlooks  the  fact  that  it  is  an  assumption.  Natural  laws 
commonly  represent  for  Spencer  not  only  facts  to  be  recog- 
nized, but  ideals  which  have  a  moral  claim  upon  us;  as  one  of 
his  friends  once  remarked,  "The  laws  of  nature  are  to  him 
what  revealed  religion  is  to  us."  To  attempt  to  interfere  with 
them  is,  therefore,  not  only  foolish  and  meddlesome;  Spencer 


Herbert  Spencer  155 

often  speaks  in  a  tone  to  give  the  impression  that  it  is  impious 
as  well.  It  is  necessary  to  insist  that  such  an  attitude  needs 
further  justification.  A  natural  law  is  not  as  such  a  "value"; 
to  recognize  that  it  is  true  is  one  thing,  to  approve  it  quite  an- 
other. Here  for  example  is  the  fundamental  law  of  natural 
selection  itself,  and  the  survival  of  the  fittest;  is  the  fact  that 
evolution  has  been  dependent  on  such  a  law  a  sufficient  reason 
why  we  should,  from  the  standpoint  of  our  present  conduct, 
abase  ourselves  before  it,  and  call  it  good?  One  would 
scarcely  have  expected  so  thoroughgoing  a  non-conformist  as 
Spencer  to  have  taken  toward  the  stattis  quo  in  nature  the  atti- 
tude of  humble  subservience  which  he  was  so  earnest  in  re- 
pudiating toward  earthly  and  heavenly  powers.  To  be  sure 
it  is  a  deduction  from  his  principles  that,  since  we  have  been 
fashioned  into  what  we  are  by  natural  laws,  there  must  have 
been  developed  in  us  an  approval-feeling  to  correspond;  but 
this  is  only  one  case  of  many  in  which  Spencer  allows  his  faith 
in  theory  to  run  ahead  of  the  facts.  The  recognition  of  a  law 
of  nature  may  leave  us  quite  unmoved ;  we  may  even  think  of 
it — and  this  with  many  people  is  what  happens  in  the  case  of 
natural  selection — with  strong  feelings  of  dislike.  And  since 
a  sense  of  duty  depends  upon  what  we  actually  find  to  be  the 
nature  of  our  approving  judgments,  rather  than  on  what  a 
theoretical  philosophy  tells  us  that  we  ought  to  expect  to  find, 
it  is  important  for  ethics  that  we  should  be  able  to  give 
some  further  justification  for  the  claim  of  biological  adjust- 
ment to  be  accepted,  not  only  as  an  end,  but  as  the  one  de- 
sirable end;  and  this  introduces  a  new  element  of  "value"  in 
the  situation. 

12.  Tacitly  Spencer  recognizes  this  demand  in  his  alter- 
native definition.  Grant  that  we  can  describe  life  in  terms 
of  adjustment  to  environment,  and  it  may  still  reasonably  be 
asked,  he  perceives,  whether  life,  even  a  life  perfectly  adjusted, 
is  really  good.  And  the  answer  which  he  accepts  is  the  tradi- 
tional answer  of  hedonism.    Life  is  good  only  in  so  far  as  it 


IS6        English  and  American  Philosophy 

involves  a  surplusage  of  pleasure  over  pain.  It  does  not  fol- 
low however  that  we  are  simply  back  again  in  empirical  Utili- 
tarianism. The  feeling  of  pleasure  is  indeed  the  only  good; 
but  this  feeling  we  also  know  from  science  is  an  accompaniment 
of  organic  equilibrium.  And  while,  to  be  sure,  in  the  absence 
of  a  perfect  adjustment,  there  is  at  present  only  a  rough 
identity  between  the  feeling  and  the  biological  tests,  the  partial 
inconsistency  is  removed  when  we  take  into  account  that 
growing  approximation  toward  equilibrium  which  evolution 
presupposes.  Just  as  our  present  feelings  are  accounted  for 
by  the  utility  of  actions  to  the  organism  in  the  past,  so  new 
adjustments  will  gradually  grow  habitual,  and  therefore  pleas- 
urable, until  in  the  end  we  shall  have  the  evolutionary  goal, 
and  the  sense  of  subjective  satisfaction,  meeting  in  a  state  of 
affairs  where,  since  man  is  now  in  complete  harmony  with  his 
environment,  he  will  instinctively  do  the  right  thing  both  for 
himself  and  for  others,  and  will  live  happily  ever  after.  And 
this  knowledge  of  the  ultimate  goal  gives  us,  accordingly,  an 
objective  standard  by  which  the  deficiencies  of  present  feeling 
can  be  tested  and  corrected. 

It  follows  that  for  Spencer  a  scientific  ethics  can  apply 
only  to  perfect  and  final  man,  and  not,  in  any  full  sense,  to 
human  beings  as  they  exist  today.  Our  actual  morality  is  a 
compromise  which  has  after  all  to  be  got  at  more  or  less  by 
rule  of  thumb.  We  have  to  do  many  things  which  involve  a 
certain  amount  of  pain,  and  which  therefore  are  only  rela- 
tively right,  not  absolutely  so;  the  precepts  of  absolute  moral- 
ity must  wait  until  our  constitution  has  become  by  the  further 
process  of  evolution  so  completely  harmonized  with  its  sur- 
roundings, that  virtue  comes  by  nature  and  without  effort.  A 
connected  consequence  is  that  duty  is  only  a  j>assing  phase  in 
the  ethical  life,  due  to  our  imperfection  as  moral  beings. 
Duty  in  its  origin  is  an  outcome  of  the  need  for  putting  con- 
straint upon  men's  inclinations,  owing  to  the  fact  that  they 
are  not  as  yet  adequately  socialized.    This  constraint,  effected 


Herbert  Spencer  157 

originally  through  the  external  agencies  of  law  and  public 
opinion  and  religion — the  visible  ruler,  the  invisible  ruler, 
and  society  at  large, — becomes  in  course  of  time  a  second  nature 
which  loses  consciousness  of  its  source,  and  remains  only  as 
a  vague  sense  of  authority  laid  upon  us.  As  man's  reason 
develops,  the  need  for  such  outside  pressure  is  gradually  sup- 
planted by  a  recognition  of  the  value  of  the  socially  constrained 
act  in  terms  of  its  own  more  intrinsic  consequences,  though  by 
association  the  vague  sense  of  authority  continues  for  a  time 
to  attach  to  this  recognition  also ;  but  when  at  last  we  are  fully 
adjusted  to  social  conditions  it  will  disappear,  leaving  only 
the  spontaneous  pleasure  of  doing  what  we  like  to  do. 

13.  Perhaps  the  question  that  gets  closest  to  the  more  dis- 
tinctive features  of  Spencer's  ethical  theory  concerns  itself 
with  the  underlying  supposition  that  it  is  possible  for  man 
to  get  outside  the  actual  present  fashion  in  which  his  nature 
judges  things  in  the  way  of  likes  and  dislikes,  and  to  subject 
these  to  the  dictates  of  a  scientific  hypothesis  about  the  world, 
and  the  course  of  its  future  changes.  What  is  the  justification 
for  identifying  morality  with  the  good  of  a  hypothetical  being 
not  yet  in  existence,  and  differing  widely  from  ourselves?  We 
at  least  may  premise  that  this  is  not  the  way  we  ordinarily 
think  of  moral  problems.  In  practice  we  are  concerned  with 
actions  here  and  now,  not  with  those  of  our  remote  descendents. 
It  is  our  own  good  and  the  good  of  our  fellows  that  we  are 
aiming  at;  and  if  the  act  is  the  best  possible  act  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, it  is  the  right  act,  absolutely  and  not  relatively, 
though  it  may  not  involve  all  the  pleasurable  consequences 
that  would  accrue  in  a  perfect  world.  To  deal  with  this  last 
consideration  we  have  to  shift  the  issue;  we  now  are  taking 
as  the  problem  of  ethics,  not  the  everyday  business  of  living, 
but  the  rather  grandiose  task  of  carrying  on  the  process  of 
cosmic  evolution,  and  seeing  so  far  as  lies  in  us  that  it  does  not 
go  astray.  Indeed  on  Spencer's  showing  the  question.  What 
is  it  my  duty  to  do?  apparently  is  crowded  out  altogether  in 


158        English  and  American  Philosophy 

a  scientific  ethics.  /  cannot  answer  it  on  principle,  because 
ethical  principles  apply  only  under  conditions  different  from 
my  own;  and  my  perfect  descendents  cannot  answer  it,  be- 
cause they  will  never  have  any  occasion  to  raise  it,  the  matter 
being  settled  for  them  by  their  natural  constitution. 

To  this  it  might  perhaps  be  replied  that  we  are  not  left  with- 
out an  answer  after  all;  our  very  formula  supplies  one.  What 
could  be  a  greater  and  more  inspiring  ideal  of  ethical  conduct 
than  to  think  of  it,  not  as  dealing  with  matters  of  casuistic  de- 
tail, but  as  a  cooperation  with  the  forces  of  evolution,  a  grand 
campaign  to  remake  human  nature?  But  it  is  just  the  char- 
acter of  this  ideal  that  gives  point  to  the  suspicions  which  it 
will  arouse  in  minds  adjusted  to  a  less  ambitious  program. 
There  is,  to  begin  with,  a  reasonable  doubt  about  our  intel- 
lectual capacity  to  turn  the  very  abstract  generalizations  of 
evolutionary  science  into  a  source  of  explanation  sufficiently 
precise  to  guide  us  in  the  work  of  furthering  the  world's  prog- 
ress toward  a  creature  different  from  ourselves,  and  living 
under  different  conditions.  A  few  very  general  things  can 
of  course  be  said — most  of  which,  however,  everyone  knew  per- 
fectly well  before  the  philosophy  of  evolution  was  invented — 
about  what  is  required  if  life  is  to  be  preserved  at  all,  and  the 
race  to  go  on.  But  what  constitutes  fulness  and  satisfactori- 
ness  of  life,  as  distinct  from  length  of  days,  we  can  only  tell 
if  we  know  the  exact  nature  of  the  being  who  is  to  be  satis- 
fied; and  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  anything  but  an  empirical 
trying  out  of  the  possibilities  of  living  can  give  us  this.  Con- 
tinuance is  compatible  with  innumerable  sorts  of  natures,  from 
the  amoeba  up;  and  mere  complexity,  mere  addition  to  the 
complications  and  the  busyness  of  our  lives,  is  no  self-evident 
definition  of  an  ethical  ideal.  It  is  the  kinds  of  activity  that 
concern  us  as  creatures  aiming  at  moral  satisfaction,  not  their 
number  simply;  and  the  more  we  emphasize  complexity,  the 
more  insistent  becomes  the  need  of  some  principle  for  choos- 
ing between  the  alternatives. 


Herbert  Spencer  159 

But  even  if  it  were  possible  to  anticipate  much  more  exactly 
than  we  have  any  reason  to  expect  to  do  the  specific  course 
of  future  evolution,  another  difficulty  remains;  the  motive  to 
its  attainment  must  still  be  supplied.  Why  should  a  man 
give  up  the  ends  that  afford  him  satisfaction  now,  because  he 
is  convinced  that  to  some  other  being  in  the  future  they  will 
not  appeal?  Changes  in  human  nature  may  be  bound  to 
happen,  but  that  is  no  reason  why  they  should  concern  us 
who  are  not  to  live  to  see  them;  we  might  as  well  govern  our 
lives  in  view  of  the  ultimate  dissolution  of  the  solar  system. 
It  may  amuse  the  scientist  to  prophesy  these  coming  changes 
in  the  cosmos;  but  this,  especially  in  view  of  the  very  real 
chance  that  the  scientist  may  prove  mistaken,  has  no  relevancy 
to  ethics.  Of  course  it  may  be  that  one  thing  that  appeals 
to  men,  or  to  some  of  them,  is  the  "contemplation  from  the 
heights  of  thought  of  that  far-off  life  of  the  race  never  to  be 
enjoyed  by  them,  but  only  by  a  remote  posterity."  But  this 
is  a  motive  to  whose  strength  it  would  be  unsafe  to  trust  in- 
terests of  any  very  vital  importance,  even  if  the  practical  de- 
sirability of  this  were  clearer  than  it  seems  to  be.  Certainly 
the  classes  on  whom  the  evils  of  the  time  bear  hardest  are 
not  likely  to  take  kindly  to  Spencer's  suggestion  that  they  ought 
to  be  willing  to  wait  for  evolution  to  bring  relief  to  their  pos- 
terity. And  in  any  case  the  thing  even  here  that  moves  us  is 
not  the  scientific  perception  of  a  future  event,  but  the  empirical 
fact  that  we  do  have  here  and  now  this  particular  interest 
among  others. 

One  may  conjecture,  then,  that  Spencer's  notion  of  the  ethical 
goal  is  really  less  dependent  on  pure  scientific  deduction  than 
he  thinks;  in  proposing  it  to  us  as  an  ideal,  it  is,  probably,  the 
consonancy  of  the  proposal  with  his  own  sense  of  ethical  fitness 
which  convinces  him  that  the  connection  with  his  formula  is  a 
logical  and  necessary  one,  rather  than  logic  which  determines 
what  he  shall  approve.  And  now  this  suggests  the  question  to 
what  extent  Spencer's  notion  of  the  good  life  is  really  such  as 


i6o        English  and  American  Philosophy 

arouses  our  spontaneous  enthusiasm  and  approval.  And  cer- 
tainly an  ideal  from  which  all  self-sacrifice  and  all  moral  effort 
must  needs  be  eliminated,  and  where  impulse  can  be  trusted 
always  to  go  right  mechanically,  will  not  be  accepted  by  every- 
one as  of  the  highest  order.  There  is  something  that  grates  a 
little  on  our  sensibilities  when  we  are  told  that  human  love, 
for  example,  is  only  perfect,  only  in  the  full  sense  good  and 
right,  when  altruism  has  become  so  instinctive  as  to  lead  to 
what  is  best  for  others  without  the  least  call  upon  our  capacity 
for  giving  up  any  pleasure  of  our  own.  Nor  will  a  world  which 
has  stopped  growing,  and  in  which  life  is  a  continuous  round 
of  unchanging  habit  perfectly  adjusted  to  its  surroundings — 
a  curious  ideal  for  an  evolutionist, — seem  very  amusing  to 
those  who  happen  to  feel  that  an  element  of  struggle  and  ad- 
venture, and  the  presence  of  possibilities  of  development  still 
waiting  to  be  tapped,  are  involved  in  a  genuinely  satisfying 
experience. 

14.  Meanwhile  one  aspect  of  Spencer's  theory  ought  to 
be  made  more  explicit,  since  it  plays  so  large  a  part  in  his  so- 
ciology. Since  ethical  advance  lies  not  in  a  more  adequate 
realization  of  our  present  constitution,  but  in  a  change  of 
human  nature,  it  can,  Spencer  holds,  only  be  brought  about 
by  the  continuance  in  future  generations  of  the  same  process 
of  organic  modification,  particularly  the  modification  of  the 
feelings,  which  has  resulted  in  the  development  of  the  species 
up  to  date.  This  is  the  theoretical  justification  of  that  atti- 
tude of  passive  obedience  to  nature  to  which  Spencer  is  com- 
mitted, and  which  seems  in  the  end  the  only  real  suggestion 
of  practical  guidance  which  his  theory  supplies.  The  chief 
duty  of  man  is  to  stand  aside  and  keep  his  hands  off  the  cosmic 
machinery;  trust  to  evolution,  and  forbear  doing  anything  to 
interfere  with  those  forces  which,  by  a  law  of  inevitable  neces- 
sity, are  gradually  bringing  about  a  harmonious  adjustment 
of  man's  constitution  to  the  world  in  which  he  lives.  In  the 
realm  of  politics  this  is  the  doctrine  of  laissez-faire  which 


Herbert  Spencer  i6i 

strikes  the  dominant  note  of  Spencer's  sociological  teachings, 
— the  doctrine  that  the  organized  action  of  the  state  should 
confine  itself  strictly  to  the  negative  task  of  ensuring  liberty 
to  the  individual  to  do  as  he  pleases  so  long  as  he  does  not 
interfere  with  a  similar  liberty  in  other  men,  and  should  re- 
frain from  more  positive  attempts  to  engineer  the  cause  of 
human  welfare. 

There  are  several  ways  in  which  Spencer  tries  to  attach  this 
practical  conclusion  to  his  evolutionary  premises.  Thus  it  is 
the  teaching  of  the  law  of  evolution  that  functions  become 
more  and  more  specialized  in  special  organs.  The  government 
is  such  an  organ,  whose  one  distinctive  work  is  to  prevent  mu- 
tual aggression.  By  the  general  law  of  things  it  ought  to  con- 
fine itself  therefore  to  its  proper  task;  if  it  gets  beyond  these 
bounds,  and  tries  to  accomplish  that  for  which  other  machinery 
exists,  it  not  only  will  bungle  this,  but  it  will  lose  so  much 
energy  also  for  the  proper  performance  of  its  own  peculiar  task. 
The  most  fundamental  reason,  however,  is  to  be  found  in 
Spencer's  understanding  of  the  method  of  progress.  The  es- 
sence of  justice  is  that  every  man  should  be  free  from  ex- 
ternal interference;  and  why?  In  the  last  analysis,  because 
otherwise  men  are  enabled  to  escape  the  consequences  of  their 
acts,  and  so  natural  selection  is  hindered  in  its  beneficent  task. 
The  chief  reason  why  government  interference  proves  always 
a  calamity  is,  that  it  tends  to  even  up  the  inequalities  among 
men,  relieving  weakness  and  ignorance  of  the  penalties  that 
are  their  due,  and  preventing  superior  capacity  from  peopling 
the  world  with  its  better  stock.  For  it  is  this  that  in  the  end 
is  alone  decisive.  The  one  possibility  of  progress  is  through 
those  changes  in  the  human  organism,  brought  about  through 
"multitudinous  generations,"  which  bring  it  into  greater  har- 
mony with  the  conditions  of  life;  and  the  road  to  this  is  the 
one  that  nature  has  always  followed — the  storing  up  of  suc- 
cessful habit  till  it  becomes  hereditary,  and  the  elimination  of 
those  members  of  the  species  that  fail  to  qualify. 


y 


162        English  and  American  Philosophy 

This  is  perhaps  the  supreme  example  of  the  light-heartedness 
with  which  Spencer  rests  the  most  fateful  issues  on  the  infalli- 
bility of  his  logical  deductions.  There  is  no  more  difficult 
and  complex  problem  waiting  to  be  solved  than  that  which 
concerns  the  desirable  forms  and  limits  of  state  activity;  but 
for  Spencer  the  question  is  a  closed  one,  which  only  an  extreme 
of  intellectual  perversity  can  prevent  from  being  answered 
as  he  himself  would  answer  it.  It  is  true  he  adduces  many  prac- 
tical considerations  to  justify  his  attitude,  some  of  them  im- 
pressive, and  all  deserving  to  be  weighed;  but  it  is  not  these 
that  clinch  the  matter  to  his  own  mind,  or  give  him  his  dog- 
matic assurance.  There  are  several  things  that  might  have  sug- 
gested greater  caution.  One  is  that  his  reasoning  everywhere 
involves  a  belief  in  the  inheritance  of  acquired  characters,  a 
belief  which  had  already  become  scientifically  dubious.  So 
too  the  application  of  the  struggle  for  existence  to  the  concep>- 
tion  of  human  and  cultural  progress  is  by  no  means  a  simple 
matter;  it  involves  important  points  of  difference  from  that  form 
of  natural  selection  that  goes  on  in  the  brute  world,  and  these 
differences  Spencer's  rough-and-ready  identification  mostly 
overlooks.  But  perhaps  the  objection  easiest  to  set  forth  is 
that  which  our  ethical  prepossessions  themselves  supply.  Spen- 
cer does  not  allow  sentiment  to  keep  him  from  drawing  con- 
clusions which  he  is  aware  will  not  be  altogether  popular. 
"A  sad  population  of  imbeciles  would  our  schemers  fill  the 
world  with,  could  their  plans  last.  Why,  the  whole  effort  of 
nature  is  to  get  rid  of  such — to  clear  the  world  of  them,  and 
make  room  for  better.  He  on  whom  his  own  stupidity  or  vice 
or  idleness  entails  loss  of  life  must  in  the  generalizations  of 
philosophy  be  classed  with  the  victims  of  weak  viscera  or  mal- 
formed limbs.  Beings  thus  imperfect  are  nature's  failures,  and 
are  recalled  by  her  when  found  to  be  such.  Along  with  the 
rest  they  are  put  on  trial.  If  they  are  sufficiently  complete  to 
live,  they  do  live,  and  it  is  well  they  should  live.  If  they  are 
not  sufficiently  complete  to  live  they  die,  and  it  is  best  they 


Herbert  Spencer  163 

should  die."  Even  if  we  could  share  Spencer's  pious  confi- 
dence that  "nature's"  penalties  are  always  just,  cUid  propor- 
tioned to  the  offence,  the  assumption  that  no  potentialities 
exist  in  man  which  the  hit-or-miss  arrangements  of  natural 
circumstance  may  overlook,  although  a  more  artificial  order- 
ing of  affairs  might  have  supplied  the  occasion  for  their  de- 
velopment, would  seem  to  call  for  reconsideration. 

Spencer  himself  would  allow  that  it  is  asking  too  much  that 
we  forego  entirely  the  claims  of  compassion;  he  qualifies  by 
adding  that  he  would  not  forbid  assistance  to  the  ignorant  and 
the  miserable  so  long  as  this  is  left  to  individual  initiative.  But 
if  the  point  is  that  weakness  should  not  be  bolstered  up  and 
protected  from  its  natural  consequences,  it  is  a  little  hard  to 
see  why  this  is  any  less  calamitous  because  it  is  due  to  private 
rather  than  to  public  stupidity.  Spencer  has  ways  of  soften- 
ing the  difficulty.  Charity  has  a  use,  for  example,  in  bene^ 
fiting  the  moral  character  of  the  giver;  and  in  any  case  a  man, 
if  left  to  himself,  can  safely  be  counted  on  not  to  be  charitable 
enough  to  offset  his  own  advantages,  and  those  of  his  offspring. 
The  implication  here  is,  however,  that  along  with  relief  will 
go,  or  ought  to  go,  a  refusal  to  allow  the  needy  to  propagate 
their  kind ;  and  Spencer  has  to  confess  that  the  chance  of  this 
is  very  slim  in  practice.  The  consequence  is  that  as  he  sur- 
veys the  disloyalty  of  man  to  nature,  he  is  driven  pretty  nearly 
to  despair;  it  would  almost  seem  that  the  march  of  the  cosmic 
process,  whose  necessity  had  been  so  triumphantly  proven,  is 
in  danger  after  all  of  being  turned  aside  by  the  folly  of  the 
human  mind  in  refusing  to  see  the  truth  of  the  Spencerian 
philosophy. 

15.  One  additional  aspect  of  the  Synthetic  Philosophy  re- 
mains to  be  mentioned — the  treatment  of  religion.  On  the 
historical  side,  religious  beliefs  are  of  course,  like  other  be- 
liefs, evolved;  and  in  this  connection  belongs  Spencer's  well- 
known  theory  of  the  origin  of  religion  in  ancestor-worship, 
arising  out  of  an  earlier  belief  in  ghosts  or  doubles  which  the 


164       English  and  American  Philosophy 

phenomena  of  dreams,  echoes,  shadows,  and  the  like,  suggest 
to  the  savage  mind.  Historical  religions,  accordingly,  are 
discredited  at  the  start  by  an  understanding  of  their  source. 
And  not  only  are  historical  beliefs  demonstrably  inadequate, 
but  there  is  in  the  nature  of  the  case  a  reason  for  holding  that 
all  such  beliefs  must  fail,  since  it  has  been  shown  that,  by  the 
composition  of  our  minds,  we  are  necessarily  shut  out  from 
a  knowledge  of  ultimate  existence.  But  now  having  thus 
got  rid  of  every  positive  content  in  religious  belief,  Spencer 
is  ready  with  a  substitute.  The  irreducible  minimum  of  all 
religion  is  the  sense  of  the  ultimate  mystery  of  the  universe; 
and  not  only  does  science  fail  to  touch  this,  but  it  deepens 
it  with  every  fresh  advance.  A  feeling  of  awe,  accordingly,  in 
the  presence  of  the  Unknown  and  Unknowable,  is  the  final 
form  that  religion  is  destined  to  take. 

It  is  no  very  arduous  task  to  point  out  the  emotional  de- 
ficiencies of  a  religion  of  the  Unknowable.  But  here  once  more 
it  would  perhaps  be  rash  to  suppose  that  Spencer  really  in- 
tends at  bottom  all  that  he  seems  to  say.  He  enters  a  protest 
against  the  imputation  that  the  unknowableness  of  reality  is 
what  for  him  forms  the  object  of  religion,  rather  than  the  posi- 
tive existence  of  which  the  proposition  that  we  cannot  know 
it  holds;  ^  and  this  is  a  distinction  without  a  difference  unless 
it  stands  for  something  like  the  religious  commonplace  that 
God,  while  known  to  possess  the  attributes  that  deserve  our 
reverence,  yet  possesses  them  in  a  form  and  a  degree  beyond 
the  power  of  the  finite  mind  to  grasp.  There  appears  a  slight 
presumption  that  Spencer  would  not  have  denied  the  right  to 
give  some  measure  of  faith  to  a  larger  and  less  exact  method 
of  analogical  reason,  for  the  sake  of  coming  to  at  least  a  con- 
jectural understanding  of  the  world  of  reality  beyond  the  hu- 
man, provided  we  find  that  to  frame  such  a  system  of  reason- 
able faith  is  necessary  to  our  mental  and  spiritual  health.  It 
would  seem  from  occasional  utterances — John  Fiske  refers 
"^  First  PrincH>le5,  p.  SQS. 


Herbert  Spencer  165 

to  definite  statements  made  to  him  personally  in  conversation 
— that  Spencer  did  not  dogmatically  exclude  such  tentative 
and  hypothetical  constructions.  And  one  passage  in  particular, 
at  the  close  of  the  Autobiography,  gives  some  color  to  the  sug- 
gestion. After  saying  that  he  had  come  in  later  life  to  look 
more  calmly  on  current  forms  of  religious  belief,  Spencer  goes 
on:  "Largely,  if  not  chiefly,  this  change  of  feeling  towards 
religious  creeds  and  their  sustaining  institutions  has  resulted 
from  a  deepening  conviction  that  the  sphere  occupied  by  them 
can  never  become  an  unfilled  sphere,  but  that  there  must  con- 
tinue to  arise  afresh  the  great  questions  concerning  ourselves 
and  surrounding  things ;  and  that,  if  not  positive  answers,  then 
modes  of  consciousness  standing  in  place  of  positive  answers, 
must  ever  remain.  .  .  .  When  we  think  of  the  myriads  of 
years  of  the  earth's  past  during  which  have  arisen  and  passed 
away  low  forms  of  creatures  great  and  small,  which,  murder- 
ing and  being  murdered,  have  gradually  evolved,  how  shall 
we  answer  the  question.  To  what  end?  Ascending  to  wider 
problems,  in  which  way  are  we  to  interpret  the  lifelessness 
of  the  greater  celestial  masses — the  giant  planets  and  the  Sun, 
in  proportion  to  which  the  habitable  planets  are  mere  nothings? 
If  we  pass  from  these  relatively  near  bodies  to  the  thirty  mil- 
lions of  remote  suns  and  solar  systems,  where  shall  we  find 
a  reason  for  all  this  apparently  unconscious  existence,  infinite  in 
amount  compared  with  the  existence  which  is  conscious — a 
waste  Universe  as  it  seems?  Then  behind  these  mysteries  lies 
the  all-embracing  mystery, — whence  this  universal  transforma- 
tion which  has  gone  on  unceasingly  throughout  a  past  eternity, 
and  will  go  on  unceasingly  throughout  a  future  eternity?  And 
along  with  this  arises  the  paralyzing  thought.  What  if  of  all 
that  is  thus  incomprehensible  to  us  there  exists  no  compre- 
hension anywhere?  ...  No  wonder  that  men  take  refuge  in 
authoritative  dogma!  Lastly  come  the  insoluble  questions  con- 
cerning our  own  fate;  the  evidence  seeming  so  strong  that 
the  relations  of  mind  and  nervous  structure  are  such  that  cessa- 


1 66        English  and  American  Philosophy 

tion  of  the  one  accompanies  dissolution  of  the  other,  while 
simultaneously  comes  the  thought,  so  strange  and  so  difficult  to 
realize,  that  with  death  there  lapses  both  the  consciousness  of 
existence  and  the  consciousness  of  having  existed.  Thus  re- 
ligious creeds  which  in  one  way  or  other  occupy  the  sphere 
that  rational  interpretation  seeks  to  occupy  and  fails,  and  fails 
the  more  it  seeks,  I  have  come  to  regard  with  a  sympathy  based 
on  community  of  need,  feeling  that  dissent  from  them  results 
from  inability  to  aceept  the  solutions  offered,  joined  with  the 
wish  that  solutions  could  be  found." 


§  3.    G.  H.  Lewes 

I.  Spencer's  is  the  only  attempt  at  a  really  comprehensive 
philosophy  which  evolution,  as  a  scientific  doctrine,  inspired; 
but  the  influence  of  the  theory  of  evolution  helped  everywhere 
to  stiffen  that  prevailing  naturalistic  temper  among  scientifically 
trained  men,  based  on  an  ardent  faith  in  the  possibilities  of 
scientific  method  and  a  distrust  of  theology  and  of  metaphysics, 
which  had  already  been  an  ingredient  in  Utilitarianism,  and 
which  was  to  have  a  brilliant  career  down  to  nearly  the  close 
of  the  century.  Without  the  help  extended  by  the  spectacular 
successes  of  the  physical  sciences,  it  is  scarcely  probable  that 
Utilitarian  naturalism  would  have  held  its  own  for  very  long; 
in  spite  of  its  fascination  for  minds  of  a  certain  cast,  it  is  too 
far  removed  from  the  popular  fancy  in  religion  and  politics, 
and  its  metaphysical  foundations  are  too  insecure,  to  make 
it  easy  to  imagine  for  it  a  continued  triumph.  The  appear- 
ance of  a  powerful  ally,  however,  gave  the  naturalistic  spirit 
a  new  lease  of  life.  Modem  science  is  much  too  solid  a  fact 
to  fear  in  the  long  run  attacks  from  either  theory  or  prejudice; 
and  it  was  natural  that  its  prestige  should  win  a  respectful 
hearing  for  supplementary  doctrines  also.  WTien  the  man  in 
the  street  hears  it  said  repeatedly  that  "scientists"  believe 


G.  H.  Lewes  167 

so  and  so,  he  can  hardly  fail  in  time  to  be  impressed ;  and  even 
the  controversialist  finds  it  hard  to  overcome  entirely  his  awe 
in  the  presence  of  the  more  rigorous  and  realistic  methods 
of  his  scientific  opponents.  Meanwhile  the  interest  of  science 
in  philosophical  addenda  was  not  quite  the  same  in  motive  with 
that  of  the  Utilitarians.  Here  and  there  a  scientist  of  course 
will  have  a  metaphysical  bent  as  well ;  but  it  is  not  likely  that 
the  widespread  interest  in  philosophical  problems  in  the  second 
half  of  the  century  would  have  been  in  evidence  had  science 
been  as  free  from  outside  interference  as  at  the  present  day.  It 
was  because  religion  pretended  to  pronounce  on  matters  in  which 
the  scientist  was  vitally  concerned,  that  he  thought  it  neces- 
sary to  clear  the  ground  with  a  metaphysical  attack  upon  the 
current  creed.  The  Utilitarian  had  also  had  the  same  desire 
to  undermine  religion,  but  his  reason  was  a  different  one;  it 
was  a  practical  and  social  reason,  the  outcome  of  the  belief 
that  religious  conservatism  was  on  the  side  of  the  enemies  of 
progress. 

2.  A  t5rpical  representative  of  the  claims  of  scientific 
method,  whose  work  shows  clearly  the  influence  of  the  new 
ideas  in  their  transitional  stage,  is  George  Henry  Lewes.  Lewes 
was  a  competent  amateur  scientist,  and  an  industrious  and 
versatile  man  of  letters.  His  first  venture  was  his  Biographical 
History  of  Philosophy^  a  very  readable  book  which  is  not 
likely  however  to  please  the  philosopher,  since  it  proceeds  on 
the  assumption  that  books  on  philosophy  have  mostly  been 
a  waste  of  ink.  In  a  later  revision  however,  and  in  his  more 
mature  work  entitled  Problems  of  Life  and  Mind,  this  super- 
ciliousness has  appreciably  abated.  The  blame  is  now  placed 
not  on  metaphysics  itself,  but  on  its  mistaken  method;  and 
Lewes,  assuming  himself  the  role  of  metaphysician,  sets  out 
to  show  how  philosophical  problems  can  profitably  be  attacked. 

Lewes'  program  consists  in  the  disentanglement  from  phi- 
losophy of  all  the  elements  that  are  "metempirical,"  and  so 
essentially  insoluble  and  meaningless,  and  the  restatement  of  its 


I 


1 68        English  and  American  Philosophy 

problems  in  a  form  that  can  conceivably  be  answered  in  terms 
of  experience.  Thus  the  notion  of  a  soul  behind  mental  phe- 
nomena, of  a  substratum  in  which  qualities  inhere,  of  power 
as  an  effective  agent,  of  law  as  that  which  is  supposed  to 
govern  changes  instead  of  undertaking  simply  to  describe  them 
— these  are  all  metempirical,  mere  hypostasized  verbal  ab- 
stractions, and  should  be  rigorously  excluded  from  a  scien- 
tific philosophy.  Philosophy  accordingly  becomes  a  logic  of 
the  highest  concepts  or  generalizations  of  science.  Lewes' 
analysis  of  fundamental  scientific  notions,  though  its  results 
have  no  striking  novelty,  is  skilfully  done,  and  there  is  noth- 
ing of  necessity  to  prevent  its  being  accepted  in  large  meas- 
ure by  philosophers  of  a  different  school.  What  really  separates 
positivism  from  other  philosophies  is  not  this  logic  of  science, 
but  the  further  claim  that  science  exhausts  all  the  legitimate 
possibilities  of  knowledge;  and  here  the  issue  becomes  less 
straightforward. 

3.  It  is  doubtful  whether  Lewes  has,  in  spite  of  his  read- 
ings in  the  history  of  philosophy,  more  than  a  vague  under- 
standing of  the  "metaphysical"  method  which  he  is  attacking; 
to  him  it  has  the  popular  sense  of  an  appeal  to  some  supposed 
special  intellectual  faculty  or  abstract  form  of  thought,  or, 
even  worse,  to  final  causes,  as  a  competitor  of  scientific  ex- 
planation. Now  neither  of  these  things  is  necessarily  involved 
in  the  supposition  that  it  may  be  possible  to  attain  a  knowledge 
of  the  nature  of  reality  other  than  the  tracing  of  experienced 
sequences.  One  can  put  the  problem  in  a  way  to  prejudge 
the  issue — if  such  an  inquiry  is  made  to  mean,  that  is,  a 
hunt  for  some  characterless  entity,  some  underlying  substratum, 
whose  like  never  enters  into  experience.  But  to  ask  whether 
we  may  not  perhaps  have  a  right  to  think  the  nature  of  reality 
in  terms  such  as  experience  itself  supplies,  is  not  an  obvious 
absurdity.  Take  once  more  the  simplest  possible  case.  The  law 
of  the  sequence  of  sensations  is  one  thing,  the  nature  of  the 
sensation  itself  is  another;  and  if  sensation  be  a  real  part 


G.  H.  Lewes  169 

of  the  universe,  as  supposedly  it  is,  in  knowing  it  we  have  a 
knowledge  which  is  not  merely  relative,  or  reducible  to  scientific 
laws  of  phenomena.  The  same  ambiguity  appears  in  Lewes* 
principle  of  relativity  that  appeared  in  Spencer.  Our  knowl- 
edge, he  everywhere  insists,  is  necessarily  and  forever  only 
relative;  what  does  this  mean?  That  I  cannot  know  abotU 
a  thing,  or  describe  it,  except  in  terms  of  its  relation  to  other 
things,  is  doubtless  true;  and  if  I  choose  to  speak  of  knowing 
only  in  this  sense,  there  can  be  no  knowledge  without  relations. 
But  now  while  all  the  information  I  have  about  red,  other  than 
its  intrinsic  redness,  comes  from  acts  of  comparison,  the  red- 
ness itself  does  not  depend  on  the  comparison,  but  rather  the 
comparison  on  it;  and  I  plainly  can  have  acquaintance  with  it 
in  its  own  right. 

This  need  not  mean  that  a  single  entity  can  exist  by  itself; 
the  discovery  of  relations  attaching  to  it  shows  that  it  somehow 
belongs  to  a  related  world.  And  if  to  know  a  thing  ''in  itself" 
is  made  to  mean — and  this  is  how  Lewes  insists  on  taking  it 
— that  we  know  it  as  something  that  has  no  relations,  that  is, 
as  it  cannot  exist,  it  is  a  simple  matter  for  him  to  appear  to 
make  his  point.  But  to  uphold  the  thesis  that  all  knowledge  is 
relative,  it  is  necessary  to  get  rid  not  only  of  an  unknown  sub- 
stratum conceived  as  an  unrelated  existence,  but  of  all  knowl- 
edge content  that  has  its  own  independent  and  non-relational 
character;  and  this  Lewes'  argument,  at  least,  quite  fails  to  do. 
There  seems  no  reason  in  the  nature  of  knowledge,  then,  why  it 
may  not  be  possible  to  claim  acquaintance  with  the  actual  tex- 
ture of  the  world,  as  well  as  with  descriptive  laws  of  change 
and  sequence.  This  may  lie  outside  the  strictly  scientific  in- 
terest; the  intrinsic  qualitative  nature  of  reality,  if  we  could 
get  at  it,  would  very  likely  not  help  us  to  explain  events.  But 
the  elimination  of  every  other  possible  interest  in  favor  of 
the  scientific  is  what  positivism  must  justify  rather  than  as- 
simie. 

It  is  not  necessary  however  to  establish  a  rival  philosophy 


170        English  and  American  Philosophy 

in  order  to  throw  doubt  on  Lewes'  conception  of  philosophic 
method;  it  is  sufficient  to  appeal  from  his  theory  to  his  prac- 
tice. Whatever  his  success  in  establishing  the  methods  of  sci- 
ence, it  is  certainly  not  these  same  methods  that  he  uses  in 
prosecuting  the  inquiry.  If  all  knowledge  is  relative,  we  at 
least  must  make  an  exception  of  the  truth  that  all  knowledge 
is  relative.  It  is  the  necessary  intrusion  of  the  knowledge 
problem  into  the  situation  which  destroys  the  advantage  that 
the  positivist  philosopher  counts  on  through  his  supposed 
backing  by  science.  And  when  we  once  enter  seriously  on 
this  problem,  we  are  bound  to  discover  sooner  or  later  that 
we  have  passed  from  laws  of  sequence  to  questions  of  "nature" 
— have  become,  whether  we  wish  it  or  not,  ontologists.  It  is 
therefore  by  its  treatment  of  the  foundation  concepts  of  psy- 
chology in  their  relation  to  the  objectively  known  facts  of  the 
world,  that  the  sufficiency  of  a  scientific  philosophy  is  chiefly 
tested. 

Lewes'  discussion  of  psychology  itself  as  an  empirical  sci- 
ence has  undeniable  merits.  To  the  meagre  sensational  data 
of  the  Utilitarians  he  makes  several  important  additions — 
intuition  as  the  perception  of  relations,  ancestral  experience 
which  supplies  ready-made  "forms  of  thought"  or  permanent 
ways  of  grouping  the  elements  of  experience,  and  the  concep- 
tion of  a  "social  medium"  in  addition  to  the  physicd.  In 
particular,  the  relationship  of  the  conscious  life  to  the  bio- 
logical organism  is  grasped  by  him  with  a  precision  not  sur- 
passed by  Spencer,  and  governs  nearly  every  aspect  of  his 
treatment.  But  while  the  "organic"  view  throws  undoubted 
light  on  the  laws  of  psychological  process,  there  is  real  danger 
that  it  may  obscure  the  issue  when  we  come  to  deal  with  the 
more  ultimate  problems  concerned;  and  it  is  his  proneness  to 
avail  himself  of  ambiguities  here  that  makes  it  impossible  to 
class  Lewes  as  a  really  first-rate  thinker. 

4.  For  philosophy,  the  primary  question  that  needs  an  an- 
swer is.  What  do  we  mean  by  the  "conscious"  life,  and  how  is« 


G.  H.  Lewes  171 

it  Gonnected  with  the  physical  body?  Now  the  Utilitarians, 
whatever  their  deficiencies,  did  know  what  they  meant  by  the 
''psychological"  fact;  it  is  doubtful  whether  Lewes  does,  and 
at  least  it  is  very  difficult  for  his  readers  to  discover.  There 
are  two  sets  of  utterances,  in  particular,  the  attempt  to  recon- 
cile which  leads  to  a  degree  of  confusion  unusual  even  in 
philosophy.  On  the  one  hand  is  the  idealistic  claim  that  by 
the  real  is  meant  solely  that  which  is  given  in  feeling,  all  the 
distinctions  recognized  by  thought  being,  not  existent  entities, 
but  "aspects"  within  a  feeling  whole.^  And  this  applies  there- 
fore to  the  crucial  distinction  between  Self  and  not-Self;  subject 
and  object  are  not  really  separate,  but  are  only  logically  dis- 
tinguishable. On  the  other  hand  this  "relativity"  is  given 
a  more  scientific  expression  through  the  assumption  that,  for 
subject  and  object,  we  may  substitute  organism  and  environ- 
ment. When  we  put  our  thesis  into  this  new  terminology,  it 
then  appears  that,  with  reference  to  the  organism  also,  the 
object  is  not  independent,  but  is  only  one  aspect  of  a  single 
fact;  perception  is  not  an  effect,  but  an  assimilation  of  the 
object  by  the  organism,  as  nutrition  is  the  assimilation  of 
food.2  At  the  same  time,  when  we  call  the  objective  world  a 
phenomenal  aspect,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  it  is  a  falsifica- 
tion of  reality.  In  perception,  reality  is  only  revealed  to 
each  man  as  an  appearance;  but  it  is  to  each  what  it  appears 
as,  or  is  felt  to  be.^ 

5.  Now  the  last  contention,  to  take  this  as  a  starting  point, 
has  a  clear  enough  meaning  so  long  as  we  keep  strictly  within 
a  physical  universe  of  discourse,  and  debar  psychology  and 
epistemology.  Once  accept  the  scientific  fact  of  a  physical 
organism  in  interaction  with  the  surrounding  world,  and,  in 
terms  of  process,  the  "neural  tremors"  are  reality  in  that  par- 
ticular phase;  they  represent  reality  as  it  exists  under  the  spe- 
cific conditions  of  interaction  described.     But  in  what  sense 

^Problems  of  Life  and  Mind,  ist  Series,  Vol.  II,  p.  i6. 
''Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  186,  189;  Vol.  II,  p.  473. 
''Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  192. 


172        English  and  American  Philosophy 

then  are  organism  and  object  merely  inseparable  "aspects"  of 
this  neural  process,  and  not  factors  apart  from  whose  existence 
out  of  combination  it  never  would  have  come  about?  The  fact 
cannot  be  at  the  same  time  both  that  experience  is  the  product 
of  subject  and  object,  and  that  these  last  are  only  aspects  oj 
experience;  the  two  statements  represent  inconsistent  ways 
of  thinking,  of  which  the  first  refers  to  the  common-sense  notion 
of  interaction  between  organism  and  environment,  and  the  lat- 
ter to  a  more  or  less  dubious  metaphysical  reinterpretation. 
If  we  overlook  the  two  cooperating  factors,  and  identify  this 
particular  causal  process  in  the  universe  with  "experience," 
within  whose  borders  all  the  content  of  knowledge  resides,  it 
is  inconceivable  that  we  should  ever  arrive  at  the  knowledge 
that  it  is  a  result,  and  of  the  conditions  on  which  it  depends. 
If  we  are  confined  to  experience,  and  experience  is  intra- 
organic or  neural,  what  right  have  we  to  talk  of  an  external 
world  on  which  this  process,  and  ultimately  the  organism  itself, 
depends?  How  do  we  pass  from  the  object  as  the  other  side 
of  the  subject,  to  the  object  as  a  "larger  circle  which  includes" 
the  subject?  ^  Nevertheless  all  the  scientific  verisimilitude 
that  Lewes'  philosophy  possesses  depends  on  taking  the  factors 
as  actual  agents,  and  not  as  aspects  simply. 

Lewes  himself  constantly  recognizes  this  when  he  is  speaking 
as  a  scientist;  but  he  thinks  to  save  his  metaphysics  by  in- 
sisting that,  although  the  physical  stimulus  has  an  existence 
out  of  relation  to  the  organism,  it  still  does  not  exist  "in  itself," 
but  only  in  other  relations.^  Verbally  this  may  appear  at  least 
to  save  the  doctrine  of  relativity,  though  not  without  raising 
further  problems.  The  claim  that  an  object  is  nothing  but  re- 
lations is  a  form  of  words  whose  possession  of  any  real  mean- 
ing is  open  to  question;  does  the  statement  that  the  independent 
object  is  "just  the  same  objective  factor  in  other  relations" 
mean,  for  example,  that  it  is  the  "relation  to  an  organism" 

^Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  19s;  Vol.  II,  p.  235.         ^Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  p.  239. 


G,  H.  Lewes  173 

in  other  relations?  But  in  any  case,  these  new  relations  have 
no  connection  with  an  organism,  and  so  do  not  constitute  "ex- 
perience"; though  science  presupposes  them  nevertheless  to 
be  real,  and  even  to  be  knowable.  For  if  relations  between  ob- 
jects outside  the  body  are  not  what  they  are  known  to  be, 
then  science  is  impossible;  or  at  best  the  only  thing  in  the 
universe  it  could  know  would  be  the  neural  process.  Of  course 
when  they  are  known  they  do  come  into  connection  with  the 
organism;  and  Lewes  has  a  chance  to  say  that  thus  they  be- 
come experience.  But  this  again  shifts  the  point  of  view;  as 
experience  they  are  only  new  cases  of  neural  tremors,  and  we 
are  as  far  as  ever  from  the  larger  world  of  objects  and  proc- 
esses of  which  the  organism  itself  is  only  an  infinitesimal  part. 
That  its  power  to  produce  effects  in  us  is  so  much  added  knowl- 
edge of  the  object  is  of  course  true;  but  what  Lewes  started 
out  to  maintain  was,  that  these  relations  to  an  organism,  minus 
even  the  knowledge  that  they  are  effects,  are  the  sole  intelli- 
gible content  of  the  word  "real.'^ 

6.  And  now  there  is  one  further  point  that  still  more  com- 
plicates the  situation.  So  long  as  we  are  thinking  in  physical 
terms,  we  can  at  least  interpret  what  we  mean  when  we  talk 
about  a  neural  fact  that  is  set  up  by  the  interaction  of  organ- 
ism with  environment,  even  though  our  right  to  postulate  these 
last  conceptions  is  obscure.  But  "experience"  does  not  primarily 
suggest  a  "neural  tremor."  It  means  color-feeling,  sound-feel- 
ing, pleasure  and  pain,  emotion,  logical  process,  and  the  like; 
and  these  have  no  resemblance  to  the  physical  organism  and  its 
activities.  To  accept  a  new  kind  of  fact  here  would  be  how- 
ever to  nullify  all  of  Lewes'  scientific  demands;  accordingly 
he  meets  the  difficulty  by  still  another  interpretation  of  sub- 
ject and  object  as  related  "aspects."  Instead  of  organism  and 
environment  being  aspects  of  the  unitary  neural  process,  this 
entire  process  itself  is  now  contrasted  with  a  new  definition  of 
the  "subject"  as  identified  with  immediate  consciousness  or 


174        English  and  American  Philosophy 

feeling,  and  the  separation  overcome  by  calling  the  two  the 
concave  and  convex  sides  of  a  single  reality.^  The  transition 
is  eased  by  the  word  "sensibility.'*  Sensibility,  Lewes  urges, 
is  by  everyone  admitted  to  be  a  property  of  the  physical  organ- 
ism,— which,  if  by  sensibility  we  mean  the  "reaction  of  a 
neuro-muscular  mechanism,"  or  a  power  of  response  in  the 
nervous  system  leading  to  self-protection,  is  entirely  true.^ 
But  we  are  still  as  far  as  ever  from  the  psychical  in  the  sense  in 
which  this  stands  for  something  admittedly  not  like  a  physical 
movement  or  group  of  movements;  and  the  fact  that  the  word 
sensibility  may  also  be  used  in  the  quite  different  sense  of 
feeling  and  sensation,  is  no  ground  for  supposing  that  the  gap 
has  been  bridged  between  the  two  orders  of  existence.  And 
Lewes'  efforts  to  expound  his  meaning  do  not  remedy  the  mat- 
ter. His  common  habit  is  to  regard  the  doubleness  of  aspect 
as  due  to  the  engagement  of  different  sense  organs.  But  this 
gives  a  precarious  foundation  for  the  claim  that  mental  process 
is  only  another  aspect  of  physical  process.  Both  may  be  dif- 
ferent appearances  of  the  same  unknown  reality  beyond  the 
organism, — provided  we  have  first  gained  the  right  to  speak 
of  this  reality  at  all;  but  if  the  physical  is  to  mean  only  cer- 
tain optico-tactical  sensations,  it  is  no  "other  side"  of  feeling, 
but  only  one  set  of  feelings  among  others  within  the  psychical 
field.3 

§  4.     Thomas  Huxley 

I.  The  attitude  of  scepticism  toward  all  "metempirical"  be- 
liefs which  Lewes  attempted  to  justify  on  the  basis  of  sound 
scientific  method,  receives  a  simpler,  and,  partly  for  this  reason, 
a  much  more  striking  expression  in  Thomas  Huxley.  The  tem- 
peramental bias  with  which  a  naturalistic  creed  in  modem  times 
will  usually  be  found  associated,  has  in  Huxley  its  perfect 

^Ibtd.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  112,  iig;  Vol.  II,  p.  4S9. 

*  Third  Series,  Vol.  II,  pp.  20,  38. 

'First  Series,  Vol.  II,  pp.  482  ff.;  Second  Series,  p.  3<,i. 


Thomas  Huxley  175 

fruit.  The  one  human  virtue  that  for  him  overtops  the  rest, — 
and  it  is  a  virtue  so  rare,  comparatively,  that  even  an  over- 
emphasis upon  it  may  be  excusable, — is  intellectual  honesty. 
^'If  you  will  accept  the  results  of  the  experience  of  an  old 
man  who  has  had  a  very  chequered  existence,"  he  writes  to- 
ward the  close  of  his  life,  "there  is  nothing  of  permanent  value, 
— putting  aside  a  few  human  affections, — nothing  that  satis- 
fies quiet  reflection,  except  the  sense  of  having  worked,  ac- 
cording to  one's  capacity  and  light,  to  make  things  clear,  and 
to  get  rid  of  cant  and  shams  of  all  sorts.  This  was  the  lesson 
I  learned  from  Carlyle's  book  when  I  was  a  boy,  and  it  has 
stuck  by  me  all  my  life."  Sentiment,  emotion,  feeling — these 
may  be  very  well  in  their  place;  but  their  place  is  certainly 
not  to  interfere  with  cool,  clear,  straightforward  thinking. 
"My  beliefs  positive  and  negative,"  he  writes  to  Kingsley  in 
reply  to  a  note  of  sympathy  on  the  death  of  his  little  son, 
"on  all  the  matters  of  which  you  speak  are  of  long  and  slow 
growth,  and  are  firmly  rooted.  But  the  great  blow  which  fell 
upon  me  seemed  to  stir  them  to  their  foundation,  and  had  I 
Uved  a  couple  of  centuries  earlier  I  could  have  fancied  a 
devil  scoffing  at  me  and  them,  and  asking  me  what  profit 
it  was  to  have  stripped  myself  of  the  hopes  and  consolations  of 
the  mass  of  mankind.  To  which  my  only  reply  was,  and  is: 
O  Devil,  truth  is  better  than  much  profit.  I  have  searched  over 
the  grounds  of  my  belief,  and  if  wife  and  child  and  name  and 
fame  were  all  to  be  lost  to  me  one  after  another,  still  I  would 
not  lie." 

2.     But  now  "truth"  as  it  appeals  to  Huxley  and  to  the 

scientific  mind  of  which  he  is  a  spokesman,  has,  once  more,  a 

special   and  even  technical  character.    Truth  is  that  which  can 

be  experimentally  tested.     It  is  only  as  we  go  to  the  "great 

^  schoolmaster,  experience,"  that  we  get  the  kind  of  assurance 

.   on  which  we  have  a  right  to  rely;  "the  man  of  science  has 

V 1  learned  to  believe  in  justification,  not  by  faith,  but  by  veri- 

fication."     Huxley  is  willing  to  admit,  in  theory,  that  even 


176        English  and  American  Philosophy 

science  itself  is  open  to  speculative  doubt.  "If  there  is  any- 
thing in  the  world  which  I  do  firmly  believe  in,"  he  declares, 
"it  is  the  universal  validity  of  the  law  of  causation;  but  that 
universality  cannot  be  proved  by  any  amount  of  experience, 
let  alone  that  which  comes  to  us  through  the  senses."  Phi- 
losophy, however,  has  prospered  exactly  in  so  far  as  it  has  dis- 
regarded such  theoretical  possibilities  of  doubt.  The  "great  act 
of  faith  which  leads  us  to  take  the  experience  of  the  past  as  a 
safe  guide  in  our  dealing  with  the  present  and  the  future,"  is 
justified  by  its  fruits;  to  quarrel  with  the  residual  uncertainty 
that  besets  us  in  matters  of  science  would  be  "about  as  reason- 
able as  to  object  to  live  one's  life  with  due  thought  for  the 
morrow,  because  no  man  can  be  sure  he  will  be  alive  an  hour 
hence."  But  this  assurance  has  no  right  to  be  extended  beyond 
the  field  within  which  verification  in  detail  is  possible;  it  does 
not  permit  the  scientist,  any  more  than  the  theologian,  to  dog- 
matize about  the  ultimate  nature  of  the  world  in  which  natural 
sequences  occur.  "The  universe  is,  I  conceive,  like  a  great  game 
being  played  out,  and  we  poor  mortals  are  allowed  to  take  a 
hand.  By  great  good  fortune  the  wiser  among  us  have  made 
out  some  few  of  the  rules  of  the  game  as  at  present  played. 
We  call  them  laws  of  nature,  and  honor  them  because  we  find 
that  if  we  obey  them  we  win  something  for  our  pains.  The 
cards  are  our  theories  and  hypotheses,  the  tricks  our  experi- 
mental benefactions.  But  what  sane  man  would  endeavor  to 
solve  the  problem, — given  the  rules  of  the  game  and  the  win- 
nings, to  find  whether  the  cards  are  made  of  pasteboard  or  of 
gold  leaf?" 

3.  Huxley  accordingly  conceives  that  he  is  standing  on  a 
fundamentally  different  platform  from  that  of  the  ordinary 
scientific  materialist.  Materialism  asserts  that  matter  and 
force  are  the  only  and  the  ultimate  realities;  "it  seems  to  me 
pretty  plain  that  there  is  a  third  thing  in  the  universe,  to  wit, 
consciousness,  which  in  the  hardness  of  my  heart  or  head 
I  cannot  see  to  be  matter  or  force  or  any  conceivable  modifi- 


Thomas  Huxley  177 

cation  of  either."  Indeed  when  we  come  to  consider  it,  we  see 
that  so-called  physical  properties  are  themselves,  as  Berkeley- 
pointed  out,  reducible  to  this  third  fact — conscious  sensation. 
At  times,  accordingly,  Huxley  would  seem  to  be  headed  irre- 
sistibly toward  Berkeleian  idealism.  There  is  however  a  dif- 
ferent way  of  looking  at  the  matter,  in  its  place  equally 
plausible  and  necessary,  which  the  scientist  at  least  is  unable 
to  ignore.  For  its  own  purposes,  physical  science  is  bound 
to  assume  the  objective  existence  of  a  material  world;  and 
from  this  angle  consciousness  is  no  longer  the  presupposition 
of  matter,  but  its  product.  In  the  scientific  sense,  it  is  a  func- 
tion of  the  brain.  It  is,  to  be  sure,  an  effect  of  a  peculiar  sort, 
in  that  there  is  no  evidence  that  the  nervous  processes  on  their 
side  need  consciousness  to  explain  their  working.  From  the 
standpoint  of  science  the  human  body  is  a  mechanism  fully 
accounted  for  in  terms  of  physical  law,  and  consciousness  is 
only  a  collateral  product  of  the  action  of  the  brain,  as  com- 
pletely without  influence  in  modifying  its  laws  as  the  noise  of 
the  whistle  that  accompanies  the  work  of  a  locomotive  is  with- 
out influence  on  its  machinery.  Nevertheless  in  spite  of  this 
one-sidedness,  science  is  bound  to  regard  consciousness  as  a 
causal  product,  which  presupposes  the  prior  existence  of  a 
physical  basis. 

Here  then  are  two  different  starting  points,  both  plausible  in 
themselves,  and  yet  leading  to  opposite  conclusions;  for  pur- 
poses of  scientific  explanation  it  appears  that  sensation  is  a 
function  of  the  motion  of  matter  in  the  sensorium,  while  if 
we  ask  what  we  know  about  matter  and  motion,  they  in  turn 
are  merely  a  name  for  certain  changes  in  the  relations  of  our 
visual,  tactile,  and  muscular  sensations.  And  the  conclusion 
is,  that  this  should  be  a  hint  to  us  that  we  do  not  know  the 
least  thing  in  the  world  about  how  the  matter  ultimately  stands. 
"You  see,"  Huxley  writes,  "I  am  quite  as  ready  to  admit  your 
doctrine  that  souls  secrete  bodies  as  I  am  the  opposite  one 
that  bodies  secrete  souls, — simply  because  I  deny  the  possi- 


178        English  and  American  Philosophy 

bility  of  obtaining  any  evidence  as  to  the  truth  or  false- 
hood of  either  hypothesis.  My  fundamental  axiom  of  specu- 
lative philosophy  is  that  materialism  and  spiritualism  are 
opposite  poles  of  the  same  absurdity — the  absurdity  of  imagin- 
ing that  we  know  anything  about  either  spirit  or  matter." 
However  for  practical  purposes  the  physical  hypothesis  is  the 
more  valuable  alternative.  For  it  connects  thought  with  the 
other  phenomena  of  the  universe,  and  suggests  inquiry  into 
the  nature  of  those  physical  conditions  a  knowledge  of  which 
may  in  the  future  help  us  to  exercise  the  same  sort  of  control 
over  the  world  of  thought  as  over  the  material  world;  whereas 
the  other  terminology  is  barren. 

It  may  seem  pertinent  to  ask  why  Huxley  should  have  put 
himself  to  all  the  trouble  then  of  arguing  the  cause  of  idealism, 
if  in  the  end  he  admits  that  his  results  are  theoretically  doubtful 
and  practically  to  be  ignored.  What  is  the  good  of  philosophy, 
in  other  words,  and  why  not  have  confined  ourselves  to  science 
from  the  start?  In  the  first  place,  Huxley  replies,  man  is 
naturally  a  metaphysical  animal,  and  you  cannot  keep  him 
from  thinking  about  such  matters  if  you  try.  And  in  view 
of  this  there  is  a  value  to  the  inquiry,  even  if  we  come  out  with 
no  positive  results.  ''Of  all  the  dangerous  mental  habits,  that 
which  schoolboys  call  'cocksureness'  is  probably  the  most 
perilous,"  and  the  inestimable  value  of  metaphysical  disci- 
pline is  that  it  furnishes  a  counterpoise  to  this  evil  proclivity. 
"Metaphysical  speculation  follows  as  closely  upon  physical 
theory  as  black  care  upon  the  horseman";  for  scientists  to 
talk  against  it  with  no  suspicion  of  the  metaphysics  hidden 
away  in  their  own  opinions,  for  them  "with  mouths  full  of 
the  particular  kind  of  heavily  buttered  toast  which  they  affect, 
to  inveigh  against  the  eating  of  plain  bread,"  is  to  discredit 
themselves  and  science. 

It  follows  that  Huxley^s  agnosticism  is  of  a  quite  different 
brand  from  that  of  Spencer;  it  bases  itself  upon  no  theory  of 
reality,  but  is,  professedly,  just  a  plea  for  sceptical  caution 


Thomas  Huxley  179 

in  the  matter  of  belief.  It  is  the  "sanctification  of  doubt,  the 
recognition  that  the  profession  of  belief  in  propositions  of  the 
truth  of  which  there  is  no  sufficient  evidence  is  immoral,  the 
discrowning  of  authority  as  such,  the  repudiation  of  the  con- 
fusion, beloved  of  sophists  of  all  sorts,  between  free  assent  and 
mere  piously  gagged  dissent,  and  the  admission  of  the  obliga- 
tion to  reconsider  even  one's  axioms  on  due  demand."  Its 
maxims  are,  positively,  in  matters  of  the  intellect  follow  your 
own  reason  as  far  as  it  will  take  you,  without  regard  to  any 
other  consideration;  negatively,  in  matters  of  the  intellect  do 
not  pretend  that  conclusions  are  certain  which  are  not  demon- 
strated or  demonstrable.  For  the  agnostic,  scepticism  is  the 
highest  of  duties,  blind  faith  the  unpardonable  sin. 

4.  Technically,  of  course,  the  distinction  between  the 
materialist  and  the  sceptic  is  a  perfectly  definite  one.  Never- 
theless in  his  frequent  complaints  against  the  injustice  of 
classifying  him  by  the  former  title,  it  is  difficult  after  ail  to 
avoid  thinking  that  Huxley  is  a  little  disingenuous.  There  is 
no  doubt  a  verbal  difference  between  saying  that  matter  alone 
is  real,  and  saying  that  we  take  reality  as  material  for  working 
purposes  only.  But  what  actually  separates  the  materialist 
from  the  spiritualist  or  idealist  is  less  what  he  asserts  than 
what  he  denies.  "The  longer  I  live,"  Huxley  writes,  "and 
the  more  I  learn,  the  more  hopeless  to  my  mind  becomes  the 
contradiction  between  the  theory  of  the  universe  as  under- 
stood and  expounded  by  the  Jewish  and  Christian  theologians, 
and  the  theory  of  the  universe  which  is  every  day  and  every 
year  growing  out  of  the  application  of  scientific  methods  to  its 
phenomena.  Whether  astronomy  and  geology  can  or  cannot 
be  made  to  agree  with  the  statements  as  to  the  matters  of  fact 
laid  down  in  Genesis,  whether  the  Gospels  are  historically  true 
or  not,  are  matters  of  comparatively  small  moment  in  the  face 
of  the  impassable  gulf  between  the  anthropomorphism,  how- 
ever refined,  of  theology,  and  the  passionless  impersonality  of 
the  unknown  and  unknowable  which  science  shows  everywhere 


i8o        English  and  American  Philosophy 

underlying  the  thin  veil  of  phenomena."  Here  obviously  the 
fact  that  we  cannot  be  sure  what  reality  is  like,  is  taken  as 
interchangeable  with  our  duty  at  any  rate  to  reject  confidently 
the  supposition  that  it  is  spiritual  or  conscious.  And  in  all  its 
practically  significant  consequences,  it  is  evident  there  is  very 
little  to  choose  between  such  a  result  and  materialism. 

In  his  profession  of  agnosticism  here,  Huxley  has  shown 
his  usual  genius  for  controversial  debate  in  selecting  his  ground ; 
the  strategic  position  which  he  takes  up  is,  of  all  forms  of 
naturalism,  the  most  difficult  to  meet  directly.  His  opponents, 
who  profess  to  have  some  positive  theory  which  they  are  under- 
taking to  approve  to  the  reason,  are  of  course  bound  by  the 
rules  of  the  game,  and  must  meet  all  the  assaults  which  a 
highly  acute  controversialist,  with  a  mastery  of  crisp  and 
ironic  English,  well  knows  how  to  make  effective  against  so 
complex,  and  in  a  sense  so  personal  a  thing  as  a  philosophy. 
But  if  he  is  held  to  account  for  his  own  metaphysics, — take, 
for  example,  the  sheer  contradiction  that  develops  in  his  treat- 
ment of  idealism, — ^he  has  only  to  decline  politely  to  make 
himself  responsible;  he  is  not  pretending  at  all,  he  declares, 
to  set  up  a  rival  system.  In  such  a  position  however  there  is 
logically  one  weak  point.  What  the  attitude  amounts  to  in 
the  end  is  scarcely  more  than  this,  that  Huxley's  temperament 
demands  a  particular  kind  of  proof,  short  of  which  he  refuses 
to  be  satisfied.  I  find  the  only  tolerable  amusement,  so  he  tells 
us  in  a  letter,  practically  in  so  many  words,  in  intellectual 
problems  which  are  capable  of  being  definitely  concluded  and 
tested  by  experiment  on  concrete  fact.  I  dislike  the  suspense 
of  judgment  and  the  uncertainty  attaching  to  those  more  in- 
conclusive reasonings  that  are  too  complicated,  or  abstract,  or 
subtle,  to  admit  of  such  a  decisive  test,  and  which  remain  al- 
ways therefore  in  the  class  of  moral  probabilities  simply.  And 
therefore  I  decide  that  only  to  the  first  shall  be  given  the  name 
of  truth;  all  else  is  excluded  from  the  realm  of  profitable  in- 
quiry, and  he  who  allows  his  belief  to  attach  to  it  is  a  traitor 


Thomas  Huxley  i8i 

to  the  genuine  spirit  of  truth  seeking.  But  once  put  this  in 
plain  words,  and  it  becomes  evident  that  while  it  may  be  un- 
answerable from  the  standpoint  of  the  one  who  actually  feels 
that  way  about  it,  it  is  without  compulsion  for  him  whose  desire 
to  know  happens  not  to  be  limited  by  such  rigid  requirements. 
Naturally  this  larger  conception  of  truth  will  still  need  to  be 
controlled  by  a  feeling  for  rational  probability;  but  so  con- 
trolled, it  would  be  distinctly  the  judgment  of  common  sense 
that  it  is  a  proper  extension  of  belief. 

And  the  rational  ground  for  this  would  be,  that  we  do  not 
in  point  of  fact  ever  find  any  human  being  limiting  his  belief 
as  Huxley  would  have  him  limit  it.  Even  Huxley  does  not 
live  up  strictly  to  his  own  canons;  since  he  was  human,  it 
would  indeed  be  most  surprising  to  find  it  otherwise.  Refer- 
ence has  been  made  already  to  the  distinction  which  he  draws 
between  experimental  truths  and  those  unproved  postulates 
which  experiment  already  presupposes — the  law  of  causation  in 
particular.  Here  we  have  one  belief,  at  any  rate,  which 
is  not  dependent  on,  or  settled  by,  a  particular  experi- 
ment, or  any  number  of  particular  experiments.  So,  while 
for  philosophy  the  existence  of  a  physical  world  must  al- 
ways remain  problematical,  as  a  postulate  demanded  by  the 
practical  needs  of  science  Huxley  accords  it  credence.  A 
similar  extension  of  the  right  to  believe  appears  everywhere  in 
Huxley's  ethical  and  social  convictions,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
he  expressly  denies  to  this  general  field  the  quality  of  scien- 
tific truth.  Nature  clearly  validates  the  larger  and  subtler 
ideals  of  human  life  in  a  manner  much  less  exact  than  she 
validates  a  theory  of  biology  or  of  physics,  and  faith,  resting 
upon  deep-seated  preferences,  plays  a  much  larger  part. 
Huxley's  own  belief  in  the  supreme  virtue  of  a  love  for  truth 
is  itself  illustrative  of  a  confidence  dependent  at  least  as  much 
on  the  man  Huxley,  as  on  a  reasoned  review  of  the  cases  where 
lies  and  blunders  have  done  injury  to  mankind;  and  it  would 
not  be  difficult  to  find  all  through  his  political,  economic,  and 


1 82        English  and  American  Philosophy 

social  creed,  instances  of  strong  and  even  passionate  assurance 
where  the  tone  of  positiveness  goes  far  beyond  the  scientific 
certainty  of  the  objective  proof. 

5.  Huxley's  own  dealing  with  ethical  theory  is  compara- 
tively slight,  though  there  is  an  ethical  undertone  everywhere 
present  to  his  naturalistic  interest,  which  helps  largely  to  lend 
it  weight  and  impressiveness.  As  morality  rests  in  a  general 
way  upon  science,  and  a  humble  acceptance  of  the  laws  of 
nature,  so  science  gets  its  final  justification  as  the  support  not 
merely  of  our  practical  and  industrial  success,  but  of  our  whole 
social  and  ethical  life  as  well.  "I  want  the  working  classes," 
Huxley  writes,  "to  understand  that  science  and  her  ways  are 
great  facts  for  them, — that  physical  virtue  is  the  base  of  all 
other,  and  that  they  are  to  be  clean  and  temperate  and  all  the 
rest  not  because  fellows  in  black  with  white  ties  tell  them  so, 
but  because  these  are  plain  and  patent  laws  of  nature  which 
they  must  obey  'under  penalties.' "  "Cinderella,"  he  writes 
again  in  an  eloquent  and  famous  passage,  "is  modestly  con- 
scious of  her  ignorance  of  these  high  matters.  She  lights  the 
fire,  sweeps  the  house,  and  provides  the  dinner;  and  is  rewarded 
by  being  told  that  she  is  a  base  creature  devoted  to  low  and 
material  interests.  But  in  her  garret  she  has  fairy  visions 
out  of  the  ken  of  the  pair  of  shrews  who  are  quarreling  down- 
stairs. She  sees  the  order  which  pervades  the  seeming  dis- 
order of  the  world;  the  great  dramia  of  evolution  with  its  full 
share  of  pity  and  terror,  but  also  with  abundant  goodness  and 
beauty,  unrolls  itself  before  her  eyes,  and  she  learns  in  her 
heart  of  hearts  the  lesson  that  the  foundation  of  morality  is 
to  have  done,  once  and  for  all,  with  lying,  to  give  up  pre- 
tending to  believe  that  for  which  there  is  no  evidence,  and  re- 
peating unintelligible  propositions  about  things  beyond  the 
possibilities  of  knowledge.  She  knows  that  the  safety  of 
morality  lies  neither  in  the  adoption  of  this  or  that  philosophi- 
cal speculation,  or  this  or  that  theological  creed,  but  in  a  real 
and  living  belief  in  that  fixed  order  of  nature  which  sends 


Thomas  Huxley  183 

social  disorganization  upon  the  track  of  immorality,  as  surely 
as  it  sends  physical  disease  after  physical  trespasses.  And  of 
this  firm  and  lively  faith  it  is  her  high  mission  to  be  the 
priestess." 

There  is  however  one  special  side  of  Huxley's  ethical  phi- 
losophy, set  forth  in  his  famous  essay  on  Evolution  and  Ethics, 
which  might  not  seem  entirely  consistent  with  his  usual  con- 
ception of  the  relation  of  morality  and  nature,  or  with  a  faith  in 
that  "abundant  goodness  and  beauty"  of  which  he  has  spoken. 
And  some  inconsistency  can  in  fact  hardly  be  escaped,  though 
it  is  not  as  serious  as  it  might  appesir.  Huxley  is  thinking  now, 
not  of  the  need  to  take  account  of  the  order  of  nature  in  the 
attainment  of  our  conscious  ends,  but  of  the  disposition,  not 
uncommon  among  scientists  themselves,  to  look  to  nature,  or, 
more  exactly,  to  the  law  of  natural  selection,  as  a  pattern  on 
which  human  morality  is  to  be  modelled;  and  this  disposition 
Huxley  strongly  repudiates.  "I  am  no  pessimist,  but  also  no 
optimist.  Of  moral  purpose  I  see  no  trace  in  nature.  This  is 
exclusively  of  human  manufacture — and  very  much  to  our 
credit."  There  are  for  the  scientist  two  questions  to  be  care- 
fully distinguished.  The  first  asks  whether  evolution  accounts 
for  morality, — ^whether,  that  is,  we  can  discover  the  natural 
conditions  out  of  which  morality  has  evolved;  and  this  of 
course  the  theory  of  evolution  presupposes  that  we  can  do. 
The  second  is.  Can  the  principle  of  evolution  itself  be  adopted 
as  an  ethical  principle?  and  this  Huxley  answers  emphatically 
in  the  negative.  Rather,  in  setting  up  an  end  and  standard  of 
its  own,  morality  comes  into  sharp  conflict  with  nature.  Ethi- 
cal progress  depends,  not  on  imitating  the  cosmic  process, 
but  on  combating  it;  not  on  following  passively  its  current, 
but  on  modifying  this  to  our  specifically  human  ends,  by 
abolishing  the  sway  of  competitive  self-interest,  and  substi- 
tuting a  subordination  to  the  general  welfare.  In  turning 
thus  to  the  sphere  of  human  life  itself,  instead  of  to  deduc- 
tions from  cosmic  processes,  to  find  the  content  of  moral  law, 


184       English  and  American  Philosophy 

Huxley  is  a  truer  empiricist  than,  for  example,  Spencer; 
though  here  again  it  is  open  to  question  to  what  extent  the 
results  are  obtained  through  the  methods  of  experimental  sci- 
ence and  a  scrutiny  of  the  processes  of  nature,  in  separation 
from  our  tendency  to  accept  on  trust  the  human  instincts  that 
nature  has  implanted  in  us,  and  the  attending  sense  of  values. 


§  5.    Other  Naturalistic  Philosophers.    Clifford.    George 
Meredith.    Naturalistic  Ethics 

1.  After  Huxley,  other  representatives  of  naturalism  can 
be  passed  over  more  lightly.  Huxley's  name  is  closely  linked 
with  that  of  Tyndall,  who  shared  with  him  the  obloquy, — 
without  being  averse,  as  Huxley  was,  to  accepting  the  title, — 
of  being  branded  as  a  materialist.  But  Tyndall's  materialism 
is  practically  very  much  the  same  as  Huxley's  agnosticism. 
Matter  for  Tyndall  loses  all  its  "crassness,"  because  he  sees 
in  it  the  pyossibility  of  whatever  has  actually  made  its  ap- 
pearance in  the  course  of  human  events;  all  our  philosophy, 
all  our  poetry,  all  our  science,  and  all  our  art — Plato,  Shake- 
speare, Newton,  and  Raphael — are  potential  in  the  fires  of 
the  sun.  Interpreted  thus,  however,  materialism  has  already 
broken  its  connection  with  the  common  notions  of  matter, 
if  not  indeed  with  science  even,  as  a  sober  method  of  inquiry 
and  a  determinate  group  of  laws  in  particular. 

2.  Another  defender  of  the  agnostic  creed  is  Leslie  Stephen, 
whose  interest  however  lies  not  so  much  in  promoting  science 
as  in  a  protest  against  the  prevalent  tendency  among  advo- 
cates of  religion  to  sidestep  the  claims  of  intellectual  honesty 
and  plain  speaking,  and  to  cover  up  difficulties  of  belief  with 
loose  thinking  and  edifying  evasions.  The  significance  of  the 
religious  experience,  very  scantily  recognized  by  Stephen,  is 
set  aside  still  more  peremptorily  by  Grant  Allen,  a  well-known 
popularizer  of  science  who  turned  to  novel  writing  for  a  living. 


Other  Naturalistic  Philosophers  185 

Here  naturalism  is  completely  stripped  of  the  emotional  ac- 
companiments which  sometimes  had  obscured  and  modified  its 
normally  secular  and  unideal  character.  Awe  and  reverence 
in  contemplating  the  world  of  nature  Allen  declares  that  he 
had  never  felt.  'The  agnostic,"  an  acquaintance  remarked, 
"says,  I  don't  know;  Allen  said,  There  is  nothing  to  be  known." 
"No  emancipated  man,"  he  writes,  "feels  the  need  of  aught 
to  replace  superstition" — religion,  that  is;  "he  gets  rid  of 
his  bogies  root  and  branch,  and  there  the  matter  drops  for 
him."  Unless  a  man  goes  all  the  way  with  the  biologists  and 
anthropologists,  Allen  would  rule  him  out  of  court  at  once; 
thus  Carlyle  is  a  "cheap  imitation  thinker,"  Browning  a  "smug 
optimist  poet."  There  is  one  plain  goal  of  knowledge.  The 
end  of  man  is  to  be  happy,  in  reasonable  ways  of  course,  but  in 
a  perfectly  direct  and  naturalistic  sense  uncomplicated  by 
moral  or  spiritual  subtleties.  "The  old  asceticism  said:  Be 
virtuous  and  you  will  be  happy;  the  new  hedonism  says:  Be 
happy  and  you  will  be  virtuous."  Allen  thus  becomes  the 
advocate  of  that  aggressive  form  of  individualism  which  pro- 
poses to  throw  off  boldly  all  the  restraints  of  an  older  and 
religious  culture,  as  merely  hampering  our  natural,  and  wholly 
unreprehensible,  instincts. 

3.  Equally  "materialistic,"  but  with  a  wider  basis  of  phi- 
losophy, is  Henry  Maudsley,  a  physician  with  scientific  train- 
ing, in  whom  the  physician's  tendency  to  look  upon  man  as 
a  complicated  bodily  machine  provides  the  background  for 
a  caustic  criticism  of  life  and  human  nature,  hardly  stopping 
short  of  cynicism.  In  Maudsley,  along  with  the  other  "ideals" 
with  which  nature,  perhaps  for  our  own  good,  deceives  us,  there 
tends  to  go  also  the  ideal  which  English  naturalism  for  the 
most  part  had  held  intact,  and  indeed  had  even  clothed  with 
something  of  the  sanctity  of  religion — the  peculiar  virtue  of 
intellectual  honesty  and  truth-speaking.  As  the  single  mortal 
is  inspired  to  live  and  strive  in  hope  by  his  illusions,  so  may  it 
be  with  the  race  of  mortals;  "instead  of  grieving  that  life  is 


1 86        English  and  American  Philosophy 

so  short  and  joy  so  transient,  the  wiser  mind  may  lengthen 
life  by  putting  into  it  as  many  illusions  as  possible,  and  en- 
joying them  to  the  utmost  while  they  last, — even  perhaps,  if 
so  minded,  by  deliberately  fostering  the  illusion  in  order 
to  increase  the  pleasure  of  it."  So  of  the  duties  which  a  per- 
ception of  truth  is  supposed  to  carry  with  it.  The  prevalence 
of  an  organized  system  of  conventionalism,  or  so-called 
hypocrisy,  may  justly  breed  a  suspicion  of  its  necessity  and 
usefulness.  Its  survival  is  plain  proof  that  it  has  the  right  to 
survive  in  the  nature  of  things;  and  prudence  suggests  profit 
out  of  the  system  by  one  who  lives  in  it,  rather  than  a  doubtful 
attempt  to  reform  it  by  self-martyrdom  in  standing  out  of  or 
withstanding  it.  "To  walk  warily  in  the  mean,  so  balancing 
between  extremes  as  to  guide  well  the  going,  is  true  wisdom 
of  conduct." 

4.  More  important  for  philosophy,  and,  next  to  Huxley,  the 
most  intellectually  significant,  probably,  of  the  scientists  who 
espoused  a  naturalistic  philosophy  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
century,  is  William  Kingdon  Clifford.  Clifford  was  a  brilliant 
young  mathematician,  whose  zeal  for  ''truth"  is  quite  as  un- 
compromising as  that  of  Huxley;  he  who  would  deserve  well 
of  his  fellows,  Clifford  writes,  will  "guard  the  purity  of  his 
belief  with  a  very  fanaticism  of  jealous  care,  lest  at  any  time 
it  should  rest  upon  an  unworthy  object,  and  catch  a  stain  which 
can  never  be  wiped  away."  Clifford's  notion  of  truth,  however, 
does  not  turn  out  to  be,  either  in  theory  or  in  practice,  quite 
so  sure  of  its  meaning  as  in  Huxley's  case.  What  he  has  in 
mind  chiefly  to  protest  against,  indeed,  is  something  no  self- 
respecting  thinker  would  care  to  defend — the  willingness  to 
nourish  belief  by  suppressing  doubts,  and  refusing  to  investi- 
gate the  facts;  the  fundamental  question  as  to  what  consti- 
tutes good  evidence  he  leaves  more  obscure.  And  as  a  matter 
of  fact  his  own  favorite  doctrines  show  a  robust  capacity  for 
belief,  and  very  positive  conclusions  are  announced  concern- 
ing matters  of  large  scope  on  the  basis  of  somewhat  scanty 


W.  K,  Clifford  187 

argument;  whenever  he  himself  wants  badly  enough  to  believe 
a  thing,  pragmatic  reasons  are  resorted  to  without  hesitation. 

Clifford  frankly  turns  to  metaphysics  to  get  the  speculative 
satisfaction  which  Huxley  was  willing  to  forego.  One  outcome 
is  his  famous  "mind-stuff"  theory,  which  finds  the  true  type 
of  reality  in  the  inner  life  of  "feeling,"  and  then  extends  this 
by  analogy  to  the  outer  fact  which  appears  phenomenally  as 
the  world  of  physical  things.  The  identical  bit  of  reality  that 
I  know  as  my  own  consciousness,  my  neighbor  may  perceive 
as  nervous  tissue;  and  since  my  brain  is  continuous  with  the 
entire  physical  environment,  it  is  a  plausible  conjecture  that 
the  *'real"  world  also  is  of  a  piece  with  the  small  section  of  it 
with  which  I  am  directly  acquainted  in  my  own  psychical  life. 
"Panpsychism"  has  had  a  considerable  vogue  since  Clifford's 
day,  and  will  receive  more  attention  later;  it  is  sufficient  here 
to  notice  the  particular  character  which  in  his  hands  it  assumes. 
Instead  of  conceiving  the  world  as  a  single  comprehensive 
consciousness  analogous  to  our  own,  as  similar  theories  have 
sometimes  done,  Clifford  thinks  of  conscious  intelligence  as 
existing  only  in  connection  with  organisms;  and  he  inter- 
prets evolution  as  the  gathering  up  and  unifying  of  what 
originally  were  separate  and  extremely  simple  bits  of  crude 
feeling,  or  mind-stuff.  Clifford  is  not  sorry  to  be  able  in  this 
way  to  detach  his  philosophy  from  anything  that  looks  like  a 
religious  background.  There  is  always  a  touch  of  asperity  in 
his  references  to  religion,  due  apparently  in  large  measure 
to  his  dislike  of  the  clerical  character;  "I  can  find,"  he  remarks 
in  one  place,  "no  evidence  that  seriously  militates  against 
the  rule  that  the  priest  is  at  all  times  and  in  all  places  the 
enemy  of  all  men." 

What  is  essentially  a  religion,  nevertheless,  in  the  form  of 
"cosmic  emotion,"  Clifford  himself  brings  back  through  the 
medium  of  another  concept — that  of  Humanity.  Clifford  is 
one  of  the  most  eloquent  champions  of  that  notion  of  the  "social 
consciousness"  which  affects  increasingly  the  tone  of  natural- 


1 88        English  and  American  Philosophy 

istic  thought  m  the  latter  part  of  the  century.  Even  his  epis- 
temology  rests  upon  the  "social.'^  Although  in  the  mind-stuff 
theory  the  entire  world  of  nature  appears  as  having  an  existence 
— as  mind-stuff — independent  of  the  psychical  contents  of  my 
knowing  mind,  and  even,  most  of  it,  independent  of  the  minds 
of  other  human  beings,  Clifford's  explicit  theory  of  knowledge 
starts  from  the  traditional  English  doctrine  that  the  "object" 
is  only  a  group  of  my  own  sensations,  the  "externality'^  of  the 
object  being  then  interpreted  as  the  recognition  of  a  similarity 
of  content  in  the  minds  of  my  social  fellows.^  This,  it  should 
be  remarked,  implies  that  at  any  rate  the  knowledge  of  another 
man's  consciousness — ^what  Clifford  calls  an  "eject" — takes 
me  beyond  any  sensation  of  my  own;  and  from  so  strenuous  a 
foe  of  imauthorized  belief  one  is  entitled  to  expect  an  explana- 
tion of  our  scientific  right  to  this  extremely  convenient  ex- 
tension of  our  knowledge.  Clifford  is  too  much  interested 
however  in  further  consequences  to  stop  for  this.  The  con- 
sequences are  those  for  ethics.  If  Society  can  give  us  our  be- 
lief in  the  physical  world,  even  more  certainly  is  it  the  creator 
of  the  moral  conscience.  Conscience  is  the  judgment  of  the 
"tribal  self"  on  the  individual  self,  the  voice  of  Man  within 
us  commanding  us  to  work  for  Man.  It  grows  out,  not  of 
individual,  but  of  social  experience,  and  has  to  do  with  the 
survival  of  the  tribe  as  a  tribe  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 
Accordingly  the  moral  end,  or  virtue,  is  not  my  greatest  happi- 
ness; it  is  not  altruism  even,  or  the  doing  good  to  others  as 
individuals.  It  is  increased  efficiency  as  a  citizen,  the  service 
of  society  by  a  member  of  it,  who  loses  in  that  service  the 
consciousness  that  he  is  anything  different  from  the  com- 
munity itself.  Here  Clifford  is  apt  to  leave  the  impression  that 
it  is  a  gospel  rather  than  a  scientific  theory  which  he  is 
promulgating;  in  the  end  his  philosophy  grows  almost  lyrical, 
and  humanity  fuses  with  the  notion  of  cosmic  reality  to  form 
a  new  object  of  devotion.     "From  the  dim  dawn  of  History 

^Lectures  and  Essays,  Vol.  II,  pp.  52  ff. 


W.  K.  Clifford  189 

and  from  the  inmost  depth  of  every  soul,  the  face  of  our 
Father  Man  looks  out  upon  us  with  the  fire  of  eternal  youth 
in  his  eyes,  and  says.  Before  Jehovah  was,  I  am."  In  place 
of  the  personal  immortality  of  religion,  the  fancy  of  another 
life  "monstrous  or  suj>ematural,  whose  cloudy  semblance  shall 
be  eked  out  with  the  dreams  of  uneasy  sleep,  or  the  crazes 
of  a  mind  diseased,"  we  are  to  put  the  nobler  thought  of 
identity  with  a  communal  Life  "wider  and  greater,  that  shall 
live  when  we  as  units  shall  have  done  with  living." 

5.  Even  more  fervid  than  Clifford  in  his  anticipations  of  a 
new  dispensation  is  William  Winwood  Reade,  whose  strange 
and  powerful  book,  the  Martyrdom  of  Man,  had  an  influence 
on  not  a  few  of  his  contemporaries.  Reade  also  was  inspired 
by  a  profound  antipathy  to  religion,  and  a  profound  faith  in 
science  as  destined  to  be  the  means  of  a  regenerated  race. 
With  the  weapons  of  science  disease  will  be  exterminated, 
men  will  make  their  way  to  distant  planets,  will  master  the 
forces  of  nature,  will  become  themselves  architects  of  systems 
and  manufacturers  of  worlds.  Man  then  will  be  perfect;  he 
will  be  what  the  vulgar  worship  as  a  God.  But  Man,  who 
thus  "invents  immortality,"  is  not  to  be  identified  with  par- 
ticular, private  men,  those  "dots  of  animated  jelly."  There 
is  only  one  Man  upon  the  earth;  what  we  call  men  are  not 
individuals,  but  components;  what  we  call  death  is  merely  the 
bursting  of  a  cell ;  wars  and  epidemics  are  merely  inflammatory 
phenomena  incident  on  certain  stages  of  growth.  "If  we  look 
at  the  life  of  a  single  atom  ...  all  appears  to  be  cruelty  and 
confusion;  but  when  we  survey  mankind  as  One,  we  find  it 
becoming  more  and  more  noble,  more  and  more  divine,  slowly 
ripening  towards  Perfection."  To  sink  our  private  ambitions 
in  the  good  of  the  race,  to  place  our  hope  in  the  happiness 
of  posterity,  and  our  faith  in  the  perfectibility  of  man,  is  the 
new  religion  which  is  to  take  the  place  of  the  old. 

6.  This  growing  emphasis  on  humanity,  with  its  attendant 
note  of  emotion,  in  contrast  with  the  cooler  and  more  indi- 


1 90        English  and  American  Philosophy 

vidualistic  temper  of  Utilitarianism,  is  due  in  considerable 
measure  to  the  influence  on  English  thought  of  the  French 
philosopher  Comte.  Although  the  two  strains  merge  in  J.  S. 
Mill,  in  general  they  are  separate  enough  to  lend  a  distinctive 
character  to  the  positivistic  naturalism  of  the  latter  part  of 
the  century.  One  vein  here  is  struck  in  the  personal  creed  of 
George  Eliot;  it  is  relatively  not  a  common  one  however,  and 
has  its  evident  source  in  special  peculiarities  of  temperament. 
None  of  the  Utilitarians  had  been  wont  to  take  very  seriously 
the  pleasure  doctrine  in  their  private  scheme  of  existence;  in 
George  Eliot  the  very  word  tends  to  disappear.  "All  the  seri- 
ous relations  of  life  become  so  much  more  real  indeed,"  she 
writes  in  a  letter;  "pleasure  seems  so  slight  a  thing,  and  sorrow 
and  duty  and  endurance  so  great."  In  a  world  in  which  the 
"difficulty  of  the  human  lot"  is  that  which  of  all  things  is 
most  perfectly  known  to  us,  man's  highest  calling  and  election 
is  to  "do  without  opium,  and  live  through  all  our  pain  with 
conscious,  clear-eyed  endurance."  And  this  same  note  of 
weariness,  of  low  vitality,  pervades  even  the  ideal  of  service 
to  Humanity  which  remains  as  the  one  positive  motive  to 
give  significance  to  human  living.  "I  try,"  she  writes,  "to 
take  delight  in  the  sunshine  that  will  be  when  I  shall  never 
see  it  any  more," — a  poor  substitute,  most  men  are  likely 
to  feel,  for  the  possibilities  of  realized  good  in  the  present, 
especially  when  the  reasons  seem  so  doubtful  for  expecting 
future  generations  to  make  any  greater  success  o^  an  enter- 
prise that  hitherto  has  shown  nothing  but  failure. 

This  subdued  and  despondent  mood  is,  however,  altogether 
foreign  to  the  more  tjrpical  positivist.  Whatever  fault  he  may 
have  to  find  with  the  present  world, — and  of  its  intellectual 
merits  at  any  rate  he  has  a  low  opinion, — there  never  is  any 
question  that  a  brilliant  future  is  about  to  dawn.  By  some 
of  the  closer  disciples  of  Comte  a  Positivist  Church  was 
formed  in  England,  concerning  which  great  hopes  for  a  time 
were  entertained.    Richard  Congreve,  who  was  largely  influ- 


The  Positivists  191 

ential  in  starting  the  movement,  was  a  Comtian  of  almost 
evangelical  fervor  and  orthodoxy;  younger  associates  of  Con- 
greve  are  Robert  Bridges,  James  Cotter  Morison,  and,  in  par- 
ticular, Frederic  Harrison,  the  best  known  and  most  prolific 
of  the  group.  In  Harrison  the  peculiarities  of  Comte's  auto- 
cratic and  dogmatic  temper  appear  in  a  much  subdued  form, 
and  the  religion  of  Humanity,  interpreted  as  morality  fused 
with  social  devotion,  and  enlightened  by  sound  philosophy,  be- 
comes a  persuasive  call  to  brotherhood  based  on  human  rather 
than  on  supernatural  sanctions.  It  may  be  questioned,  how- 
ever, whether  the  devotional  tinge  that  still  attaches  to  the 
"organic"  notion  of  the  human  race  can  maintain  itself  in- 
definitely against  its  naturalistic  background,  or  whether  the 
admonition  habitually  to  make  of  this  a  "converging  point  of 
one's  whole  existence,  thoughts,  feelings,  and  labor,"  is  not 
calculated  to  encourage  the  sort  of  idealistic  sentimentalism 
which  Sir  James  Stephen  found  so  distasteful. 

7.  In  English  positivism,  the  naturalistic  background  tends 
on  the  whole  to  be  somewhat  overlaid  with  ethical  humanitari- 
anism.  One  further  and  important  representative  of  a  purer 
form  of  naturalism,  in  whom  "cosmic  emotion"  is  made  to 
center  less  on  Humanity,  and  more  on  the  natural  conditions 
of  man's  life,  is  George  Meredith,  in  whose  verse  it  receives  a 
specially  felicitous  expression.  Here,  along  with  an  insistence 
on  the  faith  that  the  whole  content  of  human  life  is  rooted 
in  our  "Mother  Nature" — Earth, — and  achieves  nothing  but 
unreality  and  self-defeat  when  it  tries  to  separate  itself  from 
her  bosom,  there  goes  also  a  strong  dislike  for  the  pedestrian 
and  utilitarian  qualities  of  commonplace  materialism,  and  a 
sustained  glow  of  feeling  through  which  the  real  is  itself 
transmuted  into  the  ideal,  losing  its  grossness  without  en- 
deavoring to  make  its  escape  to  a  different  and  "higher"  realm. 
Meredith  would  hold  his  way  equally  between  "the  unreal  and 
the  over-real  which  delight  mankind";  the  noble  enthusiasms — 
art,  humanity,  justice — he  would  hold  to  and  exalt,  while  rest- 


192        English  and  American  Philosophy 

ing  them  on  the  normal  processes  of  nature.  The  Earth  is  not 
dead  matter;  it  is  the  living  mother  of  us  all.  And  man  is 
nature's  great  achievement;  in  man's  brain,  the  powers  of 
nature  are  focussed  and  become  self-conscious. 

She  conscient,  she  sensitive,  in  him; 
With  him  enwound,  his  brave  ambition  hers; 
By  him  humaner  made;  by  his  keen  spurs 
Pricked  to  race  past  the  pride  in  giant  limb, 
Her  crazy  adoration  of  big  thews. 

So  man  on  his  side  too  must  recognize  himself  as  a  product 
of  natural  conditions.  All  the  hopes  and  aspirations  that  seem 
to  free  him  from  earth's  limitations  are  in  reality  her  own 
work  in  him;  if  man 

aloft  for  aid 
Imploring  storms,  her  essence  is  the  spur. 
His  cry  to  heaven  is  a  cry  to  her 
He  would  evade. 

And  as  he  sees  more  clearly,  as  his  intellect  matures  and  comes 
to  take  command  over  the  heart  and  the  imagination,  he  will 
Jeam  to  limit  his  desires  to  what  earth  has  to  offer,  and  give 
up  his  unfounded  dreams.  The  "ideal"  which  is  the  glorified 
heritage  of  earth  is  thus  no  vague  emotional  yearning,  no 
creation  of  the  heart  "untamed  to  tone  its  passions  under 
thought."  Intellect  is  man's  addition  to  the  sum  of  things; 
and  clear-seeing  intellect  is  the  first  requirement  of  the  ideal 
life  for  its  successful  career.  This  has  its  interpretation  and 
expression  in  Meredith's  notion  of  the  function  of  Comedy. 
Comedy — "sword  of  Common  Sense" — is  just  the  criticism 
of  human  life  through  the  use  of  the  intellect.  "The  source 
of  his  wit,"  he  writes  of  Moliere,  "is  clear  reason:  it  is  a  foun- 
tain of  that  soil;  and  it  springs  to  vindicate  reason,  common- 
sense,  rightness  and  justice."  To  dissipate  the  inveterate  dis- 
position of  men  to  live  in  a  "hazy  atmosphere  that  they  suj> 
pose  an  ideal  one,"  and  to  bring  ideals  back  into  connection 
with  the  fact,  is  for  Meredith  the  great  aim  of  Comedy. 


Edith  Simcox  193 

8.  One  field  of  naturalistic  effort  remains  to  be  dealt  with 
a  little  more  fully  here — that  of  a  scientific  theory  of  ethics. 
In  addition  to  those  already  mentioned,  there  are  several 
further  independent  essays  at  an  evolutionary  and  positivistic 
treatment  of  the  moral  life.  One  of  these,  which  has  points 
of  affinity  with  Meredith's  philosophy,  is  a  volume  entitled 
Natural  Law  by  Edith  Simcox, — ^a  book  of  considerable  dis- 
tinction as  well  as  logical  power.  Here  hedonism  and  utili- 
tarianism are  relegated  to  a  subordinate  place,  in  favor  of  a 
naturalistic  version  of  the  perfectionist  ideal,  motivated  by  a 
somewhat  austerely  aesthetic  admiration  of  "conformity  to 
type."  True  "good-for-man"  is  determined  by  the  natural 
forces  which  in  their  development  have  issued  in  the  human 
organism,  and  which  at  the  same  time  have  moulded  sub- 
jective feelings  that  instinctively  approve  the  resulting  handi- 
work. The  norm  to  which  natural  evolution  has  thus  affixed 
the  sense  of  approval  is  action  "after  our  kind,"  as  imperfec- 
tion and  vice  are  a  departure  from  the  class  type;  the  end  of 
life  is  the  making  of  oneself  as  fine  a  specimen  of  humanity 
as  possible,  through  the  development  and  exercise  of  the 
greatest  number  of  natural  faculties  in  their  fullest  possible 
perfection.  Meanwhile  however  it  is  to  be  remembered  that 
forces  from  behind,  in  the  natural  world,  not  inducements 
ahead  of  us,  are  what  most  fundamentally  condition  virtue; 
so  that  even  "perfection,"  to  say  nothing  of  pleasure,  is  not  the 
motive,  but  is  only  a  formulation  of  the  natural  law  that  really 
moves  us.  It  is  perhaps  a  fair  question  to  ask  of  such  a 
philosophy  why,  even  granting  that  the  long  pressure  of  events 
has  created  an  admiration  for  the  ideal  of  "typical"  man,  this 
particular  approval  feeling  should  possess  any  advantage  over 
other  admirations.  Any  ideal,  if  it  exists,  must  have  the  same 
source  in  evolution  as  any  other;  and  the  naturalist  has  no 
appcirent  groimd  for  picking  out  his  own  pet  ideal  as  nature^s 
end,  apart  from  the  fact  that  he  has  an  individual  preference 
for  it — ^which  is  no  longer  Science.    And  there  are  other  moods 


194       English  and  American  Philosophy 

in  which  our  moral  feeling  is  more  likely  to  be  found  in  protest 
against  the  demand  that  we  identify  ourselves  "with  the  su- 
preme tendency  of  the  universe  to  exist  as  it  does."  Neverthe- 
less a  feeling  for  the  dignity  of  the  actual,  and  for  the  claim 
which  existing  fact  makes  upon  the  will,  is  a  genuine  feeling, 
though  it  may  need  to  be  supplemented  and  corrected;  and  a 
Spinozistic  ideal  of  duty  as  the  "active  cooperation  of  the  indi- 
vidual with  all  the  real  forces  of  the  universe,  in  proportion 
to  their  reality,"  and  of  religion  as  a  devout  and  affectionate 
acquiescence  in  this  nature  of  essential  being,  is  capable  of 
some  edifying  power,  and  much  aesthetic  charm. 

9.  Another  essay  at  reconstructing  ethical  theory  by  plac- 
ing it  upon  a  "scientific"  basis,  is  the  youthful  work  of  Alfred 
Barratt, — a  sketchy  attempt  to  reduce  ethical  conduct  to  the 
fundamental  properties  of  animal  tissue,  and  the  ultimate  basis 
of  morals  to  a  reasonable  obedience  to  the  physical  laws  of 
nature.  Much  less  narrowly  biological  in  tone  is  S.  Alexander's 
Moral  Order  and  Progress,  where  the  essence  of  morality  is 
found  in  the  concept  of  "equilibrium."  Of  most  importance 
however  in  this  connection  is  Leslie  Stephen's  Science  of 
Ethics.  Here  an  evolutionary  morality  receives  perhaps  its 
most  thoughtful  and  judicious  formulation.  Starting  with  the 
assumption  that  "good"  means  everything  that  favors  happi- 
ness, Stephen  proceeds  to  modify  historic  Utilitarianism  in 
several  ways.  To  begin  with,  it  is  not  future  pleasure  which 
determines  choice,  but  the  present  pleasurableness  of  the  idea, 
— the  pleasantest  judgment,  rather  than  the  judgment  of  what 
is  pleasantest.  Consequently  there  is  no  guarantee  that  a  man 
will  choose  what  he  himself  knows  intellectually  is  for  his 
greatest  ultimate  good.  Nor  does  it  follow  that  because  an 
act  is  determined  by  a  man's  own  feeling,  the  end  is  his  own 
happiness.  Stephen  agrees  with  Spencer  that  science  demands 
a  more  objective  standard  than  feeling  supplies;  and  he  looks 
for  this  in  the  same  general  direction,  through  the  application 
of  biology  to  the  conception  of  a  social  organism.     Among 


Leslie  Stephen  195 

the  characteristics  of  human  nature,  there  are  some  which 
may  intelligibly  be  said  to  be  self-regarding,  and  independent 
of  society,  in  the  sense  in  which  an  apple,  though  it  could  not 
exist  apart  from  the  tree,  may  vary  in  color  while  the  relation 
to  the  tree  remains  approximately  constant.  But  we  may  also 
distinguish  other  characters  in  man  which  are  due  primarily 
to  the  presence  of  opinions  and  feelings  in  the  minds  of  his 
fellows,  and  which  vary  therefore  directly  with  changes  in 
other  parts  of  the  social  body.  Apart  from  this  social  rela- 
tionship, accordingly,  such  characters  would  be  unintelligible; 
and  by  virtue  of  his  possession  of  them  the  individual  is  to  be 
interpreted,  not  as  a  separate  unit,  but  as  "social  tissue." 

Now  morality  has  to  do  with  conduct  in  so  far  as  it  is  thus 
influenced  by  the  pressure  of  the  community,  acting  for  ends 
that  do  not  have  the  individual  as  such  in  view;  and  therefore 
its  ''law"  is  to  be  looked  for  outside  the  realm  of  private 
feeling.  Given  a  certain  character  or  type  of  organization,  the 
agent  does  what  gives  him  pleasure;  but  if  you  ask  how  he 
came  to  have  this  character,  you  must  refer  to  conditions  of 
existence  that  are  not  deducible  from  the  nature  of  the  unit 
which  has  been  shaped  by  them.  We  need  accordingly  in 
explaining  morality  to  go  beyond  pleasure,  to  the  objective 
circumstances  which  render  a  certain  form  of  organization  suc- 
cessful, and  able  to  hold  its  place  in  the  evolutionary  process; 
that  in  the  individual  is  "good"  which  constitutes  him  vigorous 
social  tissue, — ^which  fits  him,  that  is,  to  play  his  part  in  a 
society  capable  of  surviving  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 
Health,  power  and  persistence,  social  vitality,  the  maximum 
total  efficiency, — this,  not  happiness,  represents  the  true  moral 
criterion ;  the  moral  law  of  goodness  and  duty  is  a  statement  of 
the  conditions  essential  to  the  vitality  of  the  social  system.  It 
is  true  that  since  pleasure  normally  attaches  to  a  state  of 
equilibrium,  there  is  bound  to  be  an  approximate  coincidence 
of  pleasure  and  of  health.  But  the  coincidence  is  not  com- 
plete; and  pleasure  calculation  cannot  be  wholly  depended  on 


196       English  and  American  Philosophy 

therefore  even  for  the  momentary  judgment.  Even  if  it  be 
true  that  we  wish  for  health  merely  as  a  means  of  pleasure,  the 
only  comprehensive  rule  for  obtaining  pleasure  is  to  secure  this 
general  condition.  And  meanwhile  human  nature  is  not  a 
constant,  but  a  variable,  whose  modification  is  the  primary  aim 
of  the  moralist.  And  for  the  comparison  of  different  types  of 
organization,  the  pleasure  criterion  is  useless;  since  happiness 
itself  changes  as  society  develops,  we  cannot  compare  two 
societies  at  different  stages  as  if  they  were  more  or  less  efficient 
machines  for  obtaining  an  identical  product.  Utility  in  the 
sense  of  life-preserving,  then,  is  more  fundamental  than  utility 
in  the  sense  of  pleasure-giving.  Evolution  guarantees  the  ap>- 
proximation  of  the  two,  but  not  their  identity.  What  it  postu- 
lates is  only  that  man  will  acquire  instincts  that  fit  him  for 
the  general  conditions  of  life;  and  in  particular  cases  it  is  quite 
possible  this  may  cause  him  to  be  more  miserable  than  if  he 
were  without  them. 

But  while  the  cause  of  moral  conduct  is  thus  to  be  found  in 
social  utility,  it  does  not  follow  that  this  is  the  end  which 
men  have  consciously  in  view.  In  the  process  of  evolution  in- 
stinctive feelings  of  disgust  or  admiration  arise  which  act  inde- 
pendently of  any  conscious  perception  of  utility,  and  which, 
as  society  grows  more  reasonable,  develop  into  the  approval  of 
a  certain  sort  of  character.  The  ultimate  form  of  the  moral 
law  is,  in  consequence.  Be  this,  rather  than.  Do  this;  and 
such  a  shift  of  emphasis  is  itself  "useful"  as  the  sign  of  the 
highest  organized  type,  since  a  rule  for  conduct  can  be  laid 
down  far  more  simply  and  exhaustively  in  terms  of  the  inner 
disposition  that  leads  to  action,  than  in  terms  of  a  multitude 
of  varying  external  acts.  The  Utilitarian  principle  presup- 
poses, then,  a  problem  which  is  solved  through  the  generating 
of  a  type  so  constituted  that  evils  perceived  are  intrinsically 
hateful  to  it,  without  calling  for  an  explicit  recognition  of  their 
consequences.  In  the  moral  sentiment,  Stephen  finds  sympathy 
largely  implicated,   as  the  Utilitarians   generally  had  done. 


Leslie  Stephen  197 

His  theory  of  sympathy,  however,  has  a  touch  of  novelty. 
Sympathy  is  involved,  that  is,  in  the  very  possibility  of 
knowing  other  persons.  To  be  acquainted  with  the  inner  life 
of  my  neighbor  I  must  possess  already  the  means  of  interpret- 
ing it  through  feelings  of  my  own;  and  I  cannot  therefore 
properly  know  what  he  feels,  without  feeling  what  he  feels, 
finding  my  pleasure  and  pain  in  common  with  him  therefore, 
and  so  becoming  part  of  a  larger  whole  which  determines  to 
this  extent  the  law  of  my  nature. 


§  6.    Evolution  and  Religion.    Browmng 

I.  The  theory  of  evolution  did  not,  of  course,  carry  with  it 
everywhere  naturalistic  consequences.  In  spite  of  the  early 
odium  which  it  excited,  there  was  not  lacking  from  the  start  a 
disposition  even  among  men  of  a  religious  temper  to  accept 
it,  as  a  matter  of  fact  and  of  science,  without  giving  up  their 
religious  convictions.  Thus  among  the  physiologists  William 
B.  Carpenter,  a  great  name  in  his  day,  still  held  firmly  to  his 
JJnitarian  faith;  by  restoring  to  the  notion  of  causation  the 
older  idea  of  dynamic  power,  he  was  able  to  argue  for  the 
necessity  of  a  God  behind  material  phenomena,  to  whose  cre- 
ative will  their  physical  potencies  are  due,  while  still  leaving 
the  actual  course  of  events  to  be  determined  by  scientific  in- 
vestigation. It  is  true  there  was  a  tendency  in  many  quarters 
to  limit  to  some  extent  the  scientific  possibilities  of  evolution- 
ary theory.  Even  Wallace,  the  co-discoverer  with  Darwin  of 
natural  selection,  denied  its  ability  to  explain  certain  facts  of 
man's  psychical  life,  such  as  the  mathematical  and  musical 
faculties;  though  it  is  not  perfectly  clear  whether  he  thought 
that  an  adequate  explanation  here  would  compel  us  to  look 
beyond  the  realm  of  natural  causes  altogether.  In  the  case  of 
others  who  accepted  the  principle  of  development  in  the  large, 
the  disposition  is  explicit  to  suppose  that  breaks  occur  in  the 


198        English  and  American  Philosophy 

evolutionary  process  which  involve  genuine  new  beginnings, 
more  particularly  in  connection  with  the  appearance  of  life,  of 
consciousness,  and  of  the  higher  forms  of  consciousness  such  as 
reason  and  the  moral  conscience.  A  vigorous  representative  of 
this  latter  attitude  is  the  Catholic  naturalist  St.  George  Mivart; 
reason,  in  particular,  is  for  Mivart  a  new  departure  which 
sharply  separates  man  from  the  brutes,  and  without  which, 
as  a  source  of  ultimate  and  self-evident  truths,  the  whole  basis 
and  possibility  of  science  itself  would  disappear. 

2.  A  typical  attempt  to  show  the  consistency  of  evolution- 
ary theory  with  a  religious  background,  is  that  of  John  Fiske, 
whose  Concord  lectures  on  religious  philosophy  had,  deservedly, 
a  wide  reading.  Fiske  was  a  thoroughgoing  disciple  of  Spencer, 
and  his  first  venture  in  philosophy  was  a  resume  of  the  Spen- 
cerian  doctrine.  Even  in  this  early  volume  there  is  a  dis- 
position to  interpret  the  Unknowable  in  a  manner  less  rigorous 
that  might  appear  to  be  its  meaning  on  the  surface,  through 
the  recognition  of  an  implicit  reasonableness  in  nature,  and 
an  underlying  kinship  between  man  and  the  eternal  Energy, 
which  renders  it  not  improper  to  assign  to  this  last  in  some 
vague  sense  a  quasi-personal  form.  Later  Fiske  added  the 
more  explicit  conception  of  an  immanent  teleology,  with  man, 
and  the  higher  human  qualities,  as  the  end  toward  which  de- 
velopment has  been  tending.  In  proof  of  this  he  cites  the 
fact  that  nature's  efforts  at  this  point  turn  from  the  creation 
of  new  organs,  to  the  development  of  intelligence  and  con- 
sciousness, intelligence  more  and  more  taking  in  charge  the 
course  of  progress  even  in  the  environing  world,  and  altruistic 
S5mipathy  progressively  reducing  the  scope  of  the  struggle  for 
existence.  In  this  revelation  of  purpose  Fiske  finds  the  sug- 
gestion also  of  an  immortal  destiny  for  man.  Such  a  form  of 
teleology  he  thinks  does  not  compete  with  science,  since  divine 
action  is  now  identified  with  orderly  action,  and  not  contrasted 
with  it.  Teleology  is  a  dramatic  tendency  which  we  discover 
empirically  in  the  evolutionary  process  as  a  whole,  and  does 


John  Fiske  199 

not  profess  to  supply  an  explanation  of  anything  in  detail; 
all  the  scientific  difficulties  have  arisen  from  the  conception 
of  an  Augustinian  or  external  deity,  and  have  no  application 
to  a  God  conceived  as  immanent  in  the  world,  and  its  animat- 
ing power.  Fiske's  conclusions  are  rather  too  facile  to  be 
always  clear  to  analysis;  thus  the  sense  in  which  we  have  a 
right  to  clothe  God  in  human  attributes — and  so  to  make 
him  knowable — is  left  pretty  much  in  the  dark  by  the  claim 
that  he  is  "quasi"-personal  and  quasi-psychical.  But  as  a 
popularizer  of  what  may  be  said  to  meet  the  commonplaces  of 
a  scientific  criticism  of  purpose,  Fiske  has  had  few  equals. 

3.  Another  American  scientist  with  religious  interests,  who 
also  brings  a  considerable  gift  for  philosophizing  to  the  ap- 
praisal of  the  evolutionary  process,  is  Joseph  Le  Conte.  Le 
Conte  has  a  very  similar  doctrine  of  the  immanency  of  God  in 
nature;  but  he  is  more  specific  in  defining  his  meaning.  It  is 
not  that  spirit  is  at  work  in  a  universe  of  matter.  The  natural 
world  is  God's  life,  and  its  laws  are  his  direct  activity;  the 
phenomena  of  nature  are  objectified  modes  of  divine  thought, 
and  natural  forces  are  forms  of  the  divine  will.  Man's  own 
spirit  is  a  spark  of  this  divine  energy  individuated,  by  a  process 
of  evolution  which  passes  through  a  line  of  lower  psyches  to 
the  point  of  self-consciousness;  here  it  not  only  becomes  sep- 
arated from  nature  and  capable  of  an  independent  life,  but 
it  enters  into  a  new  relationship  to  God,  who  now  operates, 
not  by  natural  law,  but  by  a  revelation  to  the  reason  and  the 
conscience.  The  ultimate  difficulties  in  the  way  of  such  an 
attempt  to  combine  pantheism  with  independent  human  per- 
sonality, Le  Conte  has  in  the  end  to  meet  by  an  appeal  to 
the  limitations  of  human  reason. 

4.  One  other  name  is  of  interest  here  because  it  repre- 
sents a  conversion  to  the  religious  hypothesis  from  the  extreme 
naturalistic  camp.  George  Romanes  is  one  of  the  ablest  of 
the  biological  psychologists,  whose  most  important  work  is  a 
detailed  endeavor  to  show  the  possibility  of  explaining  the 


200       English  and  American  Philosophy 

life  of  intelligence  in  evolutionary  terms.  In  early  life  Ro- 
manes had  published  anonymously  an  uncompromising  argu- 
ment in  behalf  of  atheism.  But  he  later  came  to  believe  that 
a  place  for  design  may  still  be  found  if  we  shift  from  the 
narrow  basis  of  special  adaptations  to  the  broad  area  of 
nature  as  a  whole;  when  we  ask  the  question,  How  is  it  that 
all  physical  causes  have  conspired  by  their  united  action  to 
the  production  of  a  general  order  of  Nature?  there  is  some 
ground  for  the  rational  conclusion  that  there  must  be  a  cause 
for  this  cooperation  of  causes.  A  more  general  basis,  obscurely 
defined,  not  only  for  theistic  but  for  Christian  belief,  in  the 
form  of  special  moral  and  spiritual  instincts  different  from  the 
organs  of  knowledge  in  the  proper  or  scientific  sense,  is  sug- 
gested in  the  unfinished  notes  of  what  was  to  have  been  a 
book  entitled  A  Candid  Examination  of  Religion. 

5.  There  remains  a  very  miscellaneous  group  of  names, 
where  the  interest  also  centers  about  the  notion  of  science 
in  its  relation  to  religion  or  the  spiritual  life,  which  this  is 
perhaps  as  good  a  place  as  any  to  refer  to  briefly.  From 
the  standpoint  of  a  Christian  believer  the  Duke  of  Argyle  is 
the  author  of  various  writings,  of  which  the  Reign  of  Law  is 
the  best  known.  The  thesis  of  the  book,  which  has  no  scien- 
tific value,  is  that  the  supernatural  should  properly  be  defined, 
not  as  that  which  works  without  natural  means,  but  as  a  use 
of  natural  means  such  as  lies  beyond  human  knowledge,  or 
beyond  human  power  to  effect.  And  by  conceiving  law  in 
terms  of  a  multitude  of  active  entities  or  ''forces"  existing  in 
the  imiverse,  each  "necessary"  and  resisting  all  attempts  to 
violate  it,  but  capable  of  being  "overruled"  by  other  laws,  or 
of  combining  with  tiiem  to  produce  such  results  as  a  control- 
ling agent  may  desire,  design,  and  special  Providence,  and 
miracle  even,  are  supposed  to  have  shown  their  compatibility 
with  the  demands  of  science  and  the  universal  reign  of  Law. 
A  book  also  addressed  to  the  task  of  vindicating  Christianity 
in  the  eyes  of  science  is  Henry  Drummond's  Natural  Law  in 


Henry  Drummond  201 

the  Spirittml  World.  Drummond  was  a  successful  inspirational 
lecturer  before  evangelical  audiences;  and  he  assumes  that  all 
that  is  needed  in  order  to  legitimize  to  the  modem  mind  the 
religious  concepts  of  the  spiritual  life, — ^which  he  thinks  suf- 
ficiently defined  by  the  vague  notion  of  "life  in  Christ"  as 
understood  by  evangelical  religion, — is  to  point  to  spiritual 
"laws"  comparable  to  the  scientific  laws  of  nature.  The  dis- 
covery of  various  analogies  between  scientific  concepts  and 
the  current  interpretation  of  Christian  experience  is  used  to 
show  that  the  two  realms  have  an  organic  unity.  Another 
book  by  Drummond,  the  Ascent  of  Man,  proposes  to  correct 
the  one-sidedness  of  the  current  scientific  interpretation  of 
natural  selection,  or  the  Struggle  for  Life,  by  identifying  this 
with  the  struggle  for  food,  and  then  finding  the  source  of 
spiritual  and  moral  values  in  another  aspect  of  nature's  proc- 
esses, in  the  shape  of  a  sentimentalized  version  of  Reproduc- 
tion, or  the  Struggle  for  the  Life  of  Others. 

6.  In  a  quite  different  vein  is  a  volume  which,  at  the  close 
of  the  century,  also  received  for  a  time  wide  acclaim  as  an 
evolutionary  justification  of  religion.  Benjamin  Kidd's  Social 
Evolution,  the  most  successful  representative  of  a  not  infre- 
quent tendency  among  the  sociologists  to  combine  an  effect  of 
very  rigorous  scientific  method  with  some  of  the  characteristics 
of  the  romantic  drama,  is  a  defence  of  the  thesis  that  religion 
is  a  non-rational  factor, — there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  "rational 
religion," — which  is  essential  to  the  possibility  of  progress. 
The  thesis  presupposes  various  dogmas  which  it  is  not  thought 
necessary  to  justify, — in  particular,  that  progress  is  primarily 
a  matter  of  natural  selection  in  the  interests  of  the  race,  that  it 
necessitates  therefore  a  constant  conflict  with  the  interests  of 
the  individual  man  in  the  present  and  his  unwilling  subordina- 
tion to  future  generations,  and  that  human  reason  is  nothing 
but  an  instrument  devoted  to  securing  these  personal  interests 
of  the  individual.  It  follows  that  a  man  can  find  no  "rational*' 
justification  for  plunging  into  a  deadly  struggle  which  will 


202        English  and  American  Philosophy 

only  benefit  generations  still  unborn.  And  if  therefore  prog- 
ress is  not  to  be  slain  by  the  weapon  it  has  itself  brought  into 
existence,  the  intellect  must  be  held  in  check  by  some  force  not 
as  such  intellectual  or  rational;  and  this  it  seems  is  precisely 
the  role  we  find  religion  playing  in  history.  An  interesting 
part  of  the  argument  is  its  interpretation  of  the  role  of  altru- 
ism. This  the  evolutionists  had  commonly  regarding  as  check- 
ing the  universal  struggle.  Kidd  holds  that  it  renders  it  in 
reality  more  intense,  by  destroying  artificial  lines  of  caste, 
and  so  bringing  all  men  alike,  under  something  like  an  equality 
of  conditions,  into  the  competitive  arena;  and  it  does  this 
primarily  by  weakening  the  resisting  power  of  the  possessing 
classes  through  lessening  their  morale,  and  thus  rendering  them 
more  vulnerable  to  attacks  from  below. 

7.  One  further  application  of  the  notion  of  evolution  to  a 
philosophy  of  the  spiritual  life,  though  here  we  leave  behind 
altogether  the  peculiar  interests  of  science,  is  to  be  found  in 
the  poetry  of  Robert  Browning.  Browning's  interest  in  phi- 
losophy may  indeed  easily  be  exaggerated.  What  he  really 
cares  most  about  is  the  drama  of  human  life  and  character,  the 
inner  adventures  of  the  soul,  and  the  emotional  crises  in  which 
the  significance  of  our  deeds  comes  home  to  us  most  closely 
and  vividly.  Browning's  distinctive  concern  for  emotion  is  thus 
not  for  its  own  sake  as  the  end  and  justification  of  living; 
neither  is  he  engaged  in  a  merely  psychological  display  of  its 
inner  anatomy  as  a  fact  of  natural  history.  What  interests 
him  is  the  inner  logic  of  emotion,  the  self-revealing  and  world- 
revealing  character  it  bears.  The  emotion  is  significant  as  a 
stage,  a  moment,  in  the  forward  push  of  life;  and  so  it  is 
emotion  intellectualized,  and  made  to  serve  as  a  rational  guide 
for  conduct. 

In  certain  general  consequences  of  this  Browning's  own 
philosophy  may  be  said  to  consist.  What  most  directly  fol- 
lows is  the  conception  of  life  as  a  probation.  As  emotion  is 
the  sort  of  experience  in  which  we  are  made  to  realize  under 


Robert  Browning  203 

the  stress  of  some  critical  and  revealing  situation  our  real 
drift,  and  the  worth  or  emptiness  of  the  ends  we  have  been 
pursuing,  it  is  always  a  step  to  new  possibilities,  and  so  it  re- 
veals life  in  its  character  not  as  a  finished  attainment,  but  as 
a  preparation  for  something  still  to  come  more  adequate  to  the 
capacities  of  human  nature.  For  the  healthy  and  normal  soul 
this  justifies  the  forward  look  needed  to  give  hopeful  interest 
and  zest  to  a  future  in  which  "the  best  is  yet  to  be";  for  the 
soul  that  has  squandered  its  powers  it  offers  the  chance  that 
comes  from  the  realization  of  failure,  since  even  death  may  be 
the  great  final  moment  of  self-revelation,  and  so  the  transfer 
to  that  realm 

Where  God  unmakes  but  to  remake  the  soul 
He  else  first  made  in  vain. 

Hence  too  the  insistence  upon  a  divine  discontent  as  the  saving 
salt  of  life;  upon  the  peril  of  dull  acquiescence  and  stagnation; 
upon  the  demand  that  we  welcome  failure  that  comes  from 
setting  our  aims  too  high,  rather  than  "vulgarly  in  the  low 
aim  succeed";  upon  the  preferableness  of  an  experiment  even 
in  wrong-doing — since  this  at  least  affords  a  chance  for  learn- 
ing the  lessons  of  experience — to  a  negative  blamelessness  that 
is  due  to  cowardice  or  inertia. 

8.  One  specifically  doctrinal  form  to  which  this  leads  in 
Browning  is  his  belief  in  immortality.  Immortality  is  funda- 
mental for  him  because  it  is  needed  to  give  scope,  and  an  ap- 
plicability to  things  in  the  long  run,  to  his  attitude  toward  ex- 
perience. It  is  in  dealing  with  this  belief  that  Browning  is 
most  explicitly  the  philosopher.  The  same  motive  is  also 
fundamental  in  a  second  main  article  of  his  creed — ^his  strong 
faith,  amounting  to  practical  certainty,  that  life  "means  in- 
tensely and  means  good."  This  confidence  itself  is  not  the 
result  of  argument,  and  is  indeed  seldom  directly  argued  about; 
it  is  already  implicit  in  that  sense  of  the  significance  and  in- 
terestingness  of  life  which  is  at  the  root  of  his  activity  as  a 


204        English  and  American  Philosophy 

poet.  Indirectly  however  it  leads  again  to  philosophy  through 
the  need  of  giving  some  standing  to  the  fact  of  evil.  Here 
also  it  is  to  the  probationary  character  of  life  that  Browning 
turns.  While  his  optimism  is  far  from  ignoring  the  facts  of 
evil,  it  cannot  be  said  that  evil  constitutes  for  him  the  stum- 
bling-block which  the  modern  thinker  so  often  has  found  it. 
His  tone  toward  it  is  seldom  apologetic;  rather  it  appeals  to 
him  on  its  positive  side  as  a  means  of  grace,  a  rebuff  to  be 
welcomed  because  it  calls  forth  in  us  the  exercise  of  powers 
that  otherwise  might  have  lost  their  chance.  Indeed  God 
himself  would  be  limited  without  the  power  to  suffer,  and 
man  through  the  possibility  of  self-sacrifice  would  be  superior 
to  his  Maker;  hence  the  peculiar  religious  importance  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  Incarnation. 

To  the  mind  which  likes  to  place  our  present  mixed  world 
alongside  an  imaginary  state  of  perfection,  and  then  lament  the 
contrast,  this  treatment  of  evil  will  probably  seem  to  make 
too  little  of  the  ugly  facts.  But  it  is  not  certain  that  the 
failure  in  realism  might  not  be  retorted  against  the  objector. 
Much  current  invective  against  the  hard-heartedness  of  God  or 
nature,  which  supposes  itself,  in  opposition  to  a  foggy  and 
sentimental  optimism,  peculiarly  sympathetic,  clear-seeing,  and 
unprejudiced,  is  vitiated  in  a  measure  by  the  tendency,  typi- 
cally unscientific,  to  mass  the  facts  and  trust  to  their  collective 
emotional  appeal,  instead  of  disentangling  and  estimating  them 
in  detail  in  their  concrete  setting.  Browning's  contention  is, 
in  effect,  that  if  you  want  to  know  what  evil  is  you  must  watch 
it  actually  at  work;  and  in  doing  this  you  discover,  not  by 
deduction  from  the  general  principle  that  a  particular  evil 
may  be  a  universal  good,  but  by  its  actual  consequences  in 
this  or  that  man's  life,  that  it  may,  if  we  so  will,  be  put  to 
account,  and  that  "sudden  the  worst  turns  best  for  the  brave." 
And  it  is  in  the  strong  man's  attitude,  rather  than  the  weak- 
ling's, that  we  get  the  best  evidence  for  the  genuine  character 
of  the  real  world. 


Robert  Browning  205 

9.  There  is  one  further  and  more  general  deduction  from 
Browning^s  way  of  viewing  life.  It  follows  from  his  whole 
outlook  that  feeling  is  a  valid  clue  to  the  character  of  reality, 
when  safeguarded  by  a  cautious  self-criticism  through  the  in- 
tellect. Browning  repudiates  the  claims  of  reason  in  its  tra- 
ditional form.  He  will  not  allow  that  man  can  attain  to  more 
than  proximate  and  probable  knowledge,  or  that  in  logic  he 
possesses  other  than  an  imperfect  and  tentative  instrument. 
Indeed  a  complete  insight  is  not  desirable  even;  the  finer 
products  of  human  experience,  as  a  constant  growth  and  en- 
deavor, could  not  thrive  if  the  whole  issue  were  fully  grasped, 
and  "guesses  turned  to  knowledge  absolute.'*  Reason  must  be 
helped  out  by  those  less  articulate  clues  to  meaning  that  are  to 
be  found  in  man's  inner  spiritual  life.  In  appealing  to  emo- 
tional sources  of  truth  Browning  is  cautious  and  moderate. 
We  have  in  feeling  no  mystical  insight  that  does  away  with 
the  need  for  thoughtful  interpretation  and  cautious  judgment. 
But  that  in  the  higher  reaches  of  man's  experience,  more 
especially  in  the  fact  of  human  love,  we  do  come  in  contact 
with  what  is  too  self-evidently  fundamental  to  be  excluded 
from  our  ultimate  philosophy  as  a  mere  episode  and  irrelevance 
in  the  universe,  Browning  is  thoroughly  persuaded. 

It  is  in  love  that  Browning  comes  nearest  to  getting  beyond 
the  thoroughgoing  temporalism  to  which  the  logic  of  his  po- 
sition might  seem  to  point  him, — the  substitution  of  eternal 
effort,  namely,  for  achievement.  The  natural  mind  will  always 
view  with  suspicion  an  ideal  which  postpones  fulness  of  satis- 
faction to  an  everlasting  striving,  which  would  not  be  striving 
did  it  not  contain  the  seeds  of  discontent;  there  must  be 
victory  as  well  as  the  excitement  of  the  fray.  And  for  this  two 
ways  are  open.  Either  we  must  repudiate  growth  as  a  final 
ideal,  and  look  to  the  time  when  growth  ceases  and  rest  super- 
venes upon  it;  or  else  in  changing  experience  itself  there  must 
be  some  quality  of  perfect  attainment.  Knowledge,  for  Brown- 
ing at  any  rate,  cannot  serve  for  this;  finished  knowledge  is 


2o6        English  and  American  Philosophy 

impossible  in  fact,  and  if  it  were  possible  it  would  need  a 
finished  world.  Somewhere  in  the  life  of  feeling  the  goal  must 
exist  if  it  exists  at  all.  There  are  various  directions  in  which 
philosophy  has  looked  for  this, — in  religion,  for  example,  or  in 
art.  With  at  least  an  equal  right  Browning  finds  the  ultimate 
and  satisfying  experience  in  love, — that  comprehensive  emo- 
tional relationship  which  opens  up  the  possibility  of  a  settled 
sense  of  good  not  only  in  the  midst  of  the  changing  circum- 
stances of  life,  but  by  very  reason  of  this  change,  since  fel- 
lowship implies,  not  fixed  conditions,  but  a  constant  interplay 
of  action.    For  the  intellect 

The  prize  is  in  the  process;  knowledge  means 
Ever  renewed  assurance  by  defeat, 
That  victory  is  somehow  still  to  reach ; 
But  love  is  victory,  the  prize  itself. 


CHAPTER  V 
ABSOLUTE  IDEALISM 

§  I.     Transcendentalism  in  Literature.    Carlyle.    Emerson 

I.  The  conflict  between  science  and  religion  so  much 
talked  about  in  the  latter  part  of  the  century,  and  to  which  a 
brief  reference  has  already  been  made  in  the  preceding  chapter, 
resulted  in  what  may  fairly  be  called  a  draw.  On  the  one 
side  science  achieved  its  main  object.  It  no  longer  is  neces- 
sary that  it  should  fight  for  the  privilege  of  pursuing  its  own 
distinctive  work  unhampered  by  vested  intellectual  interests; 
nowadays  science  moves  freely  and  without  hindrance,  and 
indeed  at  times  with  something  of  a  swagger.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  establishment  of  a  purely  naturalistic  creed  as  the 
necessary  basis  for  this  immunity  cannot  be  said  to  have  had  a 
similar  success.  Naturalism  found  itself  opposed  with  growing 
confidence  by  rival  philosophies,  which  proposed  to  reinterpret 
the  universe  in  various  way  to  vindicate  its  spiritual  mean- 
ing, while  also  taking  care  to  avoid  any  clash  with  such  results 
as  science  proper  might  affirm.  In  general  these  efforts  fall 
into  two  classes.  The  first  does  not  depart  very  widely  from 
the  traditional  attitude  of  English  philosophy,  and  so,  in  spite 
of  disagreements,  it  can  meet  and  contend  with  naturalism  on 
something  like  a  common  metaphysical  ground.  The  second 
is  equally  concerned,  from  the  standpoint  of  an  interest  which, 
at  the  start  at  least,  was  definitely  religious,  to  show  the  de- 
ficiencies of  the  naturalistic  creed;  but  it  proceeds  in  a  much 
more  drastic  way  through  a  reconstruction  of  the  whole  theory 
of  knowledge  and  of  reality,  so  that  incidentally  its  criticism 

207 


2o8        English  and  American  Philosophy 

is  almost  as  hostile  to  the  current  forms  of  theism  as  to 
naturalism.  This  English  adaptation  of  German  Idealism  at- 
tracted during  the  last  quarter  of  the  century  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  best  speculative  intellect  of  England  and  Amer- 
ica, attaining  in  the  universities  a  dominance  that  for  a  time 
was  almost  complete. 

2.  Before  taking  it  up  however  in  its  technical  form,  cer- 
tain more  popular  expressions  of  what  is  in  part  the  same 
idealistic  tendency  deserve  to  be  noticed  more  briefly.  In 
England,  the  chief  representative  of  this  is  Thomas  Carlyle. 
The  root  of  what  is  most  characteristic  in  Carlyle  may  be 
traced  in  the  first  instance  to  his  peculiarly  active  and  deep- 
lying  sense  of  the  mystery  of  this  * 'strangest  of  all  possible 
worlds."  For  him  the  universe  is  not  "a  warehouse,  or  at  best 
a  Fancy  Bazaar,  but  a  mystic  Temple  and  Hall  of  Doom." 
Consider  that  most  common  and  familiar  of  facts,  the  fact  of 
time.  "Rough  Samuel  and  sleek  wheedling  James  were  and 
are  not,"  he  writes  in  the  review  of  Boswell.  "Their  Life  and 
whole  personal  Environment  has  melted  into  air.  The  Mitre 
Tavern  still  stands  in  Fleet  Street;  but  where  now  is  its  scot- 
and-lot  paying,  beef-and-ale  loving,  cocked-hatted,  pot-bellied 
Landlord;  its  rosy-faced,  assiduous  Landlady,  with  all  her 
smiling  brass-pans,  waxed  tables,  well-fitted  larder-shelves; 
her  cooks  and  boot-jacks  and  errand-boys,  and  watery-mouthed 
hangers-on?  Gone!  gone!  The  becking  Waiter  who,  with 
wreathed  smiles,  was  wont  to  spread  for  Samuel  and  Bozzy 
their  supper  of  the  Gods,  has  long  since  pocketed  his  last 
sixpence,  and  vanished,  sixpences  and  all,  like  a  ghost  at  cock- 
crowing.  ...  Of  the  Mitre  Tavern  nothing  but  the  bare  walls 
remain;  of  London,  of  England,  of  the  World,  nothing  but 
the  bare  walls  remain;  and  these  also  decaying  (were  they  of 
adamant),  only  slower.  The  mysterious  River  of  Existence 
rushes  on;  a  new  billow  thereof  has  arrived,  and  lashes  wildly 
as  ever  around  the  old  embankments;  but  the  former  Billow, 
with  Us  loud,  mad  eddyings,  where  it  it?     Where!" 


Thomas  Carlyle  209 

There  is  however  something  more  to  add  to  this,  which  with 
Carlyle  is  all-important.  No  soul  can  long  nourish  itself  on 
blank  wonder.  But  the  life  that  is  to  inform  this  wonder- 
provoking  universe  must  come,  not  from  without,  where  mys- 
tery alone  lies,  but  from  within.  The  human  conscience,  the 
perception  of  the  infinite  difference  between  right  and  wrong, 
is  the  clue  to  the  understanding  of  this  blind  world ;  the  knowl- 
edge to  which  Carlyle  summons  man  is  the  knowledge  which 
has  to  do  with  his  duty.  Theoretical  knowledge  is  a  very 
different  matter.  We  know  that  the  world  is  a  righteous  world, 
and  that  its  laws  are  the  laws  of  eternal  justice;  but  we  know 
this  as  an  affair  of  the  heart  and  not  of  the  head.  To  attempt 
to  prove  the  existence  of  God  is  like  lighting  a  lantern  to  look 
for  the  sun;  intellectual  reasonings  lead  at  best  only  to  a 
"great,  imintelligible  Perhaps,"  which  is  almost  worse  than 
scepticism.  But  such  a  lack  of  speculative  understanding  is  no 
real  ground  of  complaint;  the  end  of  man  is  an  Action,  and 
not  a  Thought.  The  first  duty  of  man,  then,  is  insight  into 
this  underlying  moral  structure  of  the  world.  For  Carlyle, 
this  was  the  condemnation  of  the  ruling  philosophy  of  the 
day, — Benthamism,  materialism,  empiricism,  imder  whatever 
name  it  might  pass.  Instead  of  going  from  within  outward, 
it  was  trying  to  start  from  the  outer  facts  as  if  they  were  the 
realities;  men  had  lost  their  faith  in  the  invisible,  and  believed 
and  hoped  and  worked  only  in  the  visible.  "The  scientist 
walks  through  the  land  of  wonders  unwondering,  like  a  wise 
man  through  some  huge,  gaudy,  imposing  Vauxhall,  whose  fire- 
works, cascades,  and  symphonies  the  vulgar  may  enjoy  and 
believe  in,  but  where  he  finds  nothing  real  but  the  saltpetre, 
pasteboard  and  catgut."  The  outcome  is  atheism  and  nega- 
tion, and  negation  is  no  proper  attitude  of  the  human  spirit; 
belief  is  the  healthy  act  of  a  man^s  mind,  not  doubt.  It  was 
God  that  said.  Yes;  it  is  the  Devil  that  forever  says,  No. 

3.  Carlyle's  "moral  idealism,"  as  a  protest  alike  against  a 
mechanical  philosophy  of  science,  and  the  crudities  of  current 


2IO        English  and  American  Philosophy 

supematuralism,  had  a  profound  effect  which  has  not  yet 
entirely  disappeared.  But  even  in  this  brief  statement  there 
are  visible  certain  elements  of  weakness.  There  is  a  kind  of 
intellectual  activity  whose  value  Carlyle  never  was  able  to 
appreciate.  The  mere  attempt  to  think  clearly  without  for 
the  moment  reference  to  the  emotional  bearings  of  our  argu- 
ment, the  critical  analysis  of  ideas  and  beliefs  whose  outcome 
may  seem  only  negative,  the  endeavor  to  bring  our  opinions 
calmly  and  without  prejudice  into  comparison  and  discover 
what  inconsistencies  they  may  show, — this  is  an  altogether 
necessary  sort  of  work  that  some  one  has  to  do.  But  Carlyle 
was  a  prophet,  not  a  logician;  and  to  him  nothing  seemed 
worth  while  that  could  not  instantly  be  called  into  service  to 
enforce  some  moral  lesson.  A  measure  of  justification  may 
readily  be  found  for  him.  It  was  inevitable  that  in  a  transition 
period  the  new  interest  in  mechanism  should  be  over-empha- 
sized, to  the  neglect  of  the  motives  and  ends  that  make  mechan- 
ism worth  while;  and  Carlyle  did  well  to  recall  the  thoughts 
of  men  to  a  more  positive  basis.  He  is  right  in  urging  that 
the  beginning  and  the  end  of  conduct  is  belief — positive,  spon- 
taneous, and  in  a  sense  unconscious  of  itself;  "in  all  vital 
action  Nature's  manifest  purpose  and  effect  is,  that  it  should 
go  on  for  the  most  part  below  the  surface,  that  like  the  peptic 
countryman  we  should  never  know  that  we  have  a  system." 
But  it  does  not  follow  that  there  is  no  pertinency  to  the  attempt 
to  understand  the  basis  of  the  moral  life,  instead  simply  of 
reverencing  it.  The  business  of  criticism,  of  speculation,  is  an 
interlude  in  life  which  marks  a  certain  postponement.  But 
it  is  not  therefore  an  aberration  to  be  deplored;  it  may  well 
be  a  sign  of  progress  rather,  the  result  of  increased  resources 
which  the  old  methods  can  no  longer  administer.  To  interpret 
the  new  science  as  mere  unwisdom  and  disease  is  clearly  to 
betray  a  dangerous  blindness.  The  only  outcome  it  leaves 
open  is  a  return  to  pure  instinct,  with  all  its  crudities,  and 
uncertainty  of  hitting  the  mark.    Thus  in  his  theory  of  penal 


Thomas  Carlyle  211 

law,  for  example,  Carlyle  frankly  brushes  aside  the  endeavor 
to  rationalize  and  make  efficient  the  dealing  of  society  with 
its  failures,  and  falls  back  upon  a  primitive  vindictiveness  as 
the  one  sound  basis  of  punishment.  Such  a  result  indicates 
the  defect  of  the  whole  attitude  in  morals.  It  may  honestly 
believe  itself  a  "fixed,  irreconcilable,  inexorable  enmity  to  the 
enemies  of  God";  but  it  has  no  criterion  for  distinguishing, 
when  the  need  arises,  between  the  enemies  of  God  and  the 
enemies  of  Thomas  Carlyle.  And  if  one  has  not  Carlyle's  own 
fixed  certainty  that  his  first  instinct  is  always  right,  he  is 
left  with  no  court  of  appeal.  Actually,  of  course,  the  moral 
''facts"  which  Carlyle  opposes  to  theory  are  after  all  nothing 
but  his  own  interpretations,  or  theories,  of  the  facts;  and  his 
strong  disposition  to  suppose  that  a  theory  becomes  a  fact  if 
only  you  reiterate  it  forcibly  enough  and  decline  to  argue  it, 
is  not  to  be  accepted  without  reserve. 

4.  One  outcome  in  particular  of  this  mental  attitude  de- 
serves some  special  attention.  Since  genuine  knowledge  is  for 
Carlyle  immediate  intuition  or  insight,  he  has  no  patience  with 
complex  programs  of  political  reform,  or  with  the  theories 
on  which  they  rest.  To  be  sure,  even  Carlyle  cannot  get 
along  without  a  program;  but  his  method  has  the  peculiarity 
that  it  tries  to  dispense  with  the  apparatus  of  political  specu- 
lation and  argument.  In  other  words  his  solution  is:  put 
matters  into  the  hands  of  those  God-inspired  men  who  are 
not  infected  with  the  sceptical  disease  of  the  times,  and  they 
will  settle  everything  for  us — so  the  implication  nms — through 
that  native  instinct  for  the  right  and  the  expedient  which  was 
the  great  advantage  that  earlier  and  more  favored  ages  pos- 
sessed over  our  own.  Insight  and  reverence  are  the  beginning 
of  wisdom — insight  into  whatever  is  an  expression  of  the 
divine;  and  of  all  such  expressions  the  highest  is  to  be  found 
in  man.  The  hero,  the  man  of  preeminent  worth,  is  thus  the 
starting  point  for  all  social  efficiency.  On  the  other  hand  the 
hero,  while  he  exists,  is  the  rare  exception;  the  mass  of  man- 


212        English  and  American  Philosophy 

kind  are  "mostly  fools."  But  if  the  masses  cannot  think  and 
act  for  themselves,  they  can  at  least  recognize  their  incapacity, 
can  take  to  themselves  leaders  wiser  than  they,  and  so  can 
be  set  upon  the  path  which,  left  to  themselves,  they  must  have 
missed.  There  is  no  act  more  moral  among  men,  Carlyle  de- 
clares, than  that  of  rule  and  obedience.  Man  is  necessitated 
to  obey  superiors;  he  is  a  social  being  in  virtue  of  this  neces- 
sity. The  most  precious  gift  a  man  can  offer  is  his  appro- 
bation, his  reverence  to  another  man.  The  Liberal  tendencies 
of  his  day  seemed  to  him  pointed  therefore  in  the  wrong  di- 
rection. These  emphasized  popular  control,  the  extension  of 
the  franchise,  liberty,  democracy;  what  men  need,  instead,  is 
iron  discipline.  Everywhere  the  evils  of  liberty  loom  large 
in  Carlyle's  vision;  the  errors  of  a  system  of  subordination 
and  discipline  are  venial,  which  it  is  a  mere  sentimentalism  to 
press. 

Such  an  ideal  can  hardly  be  accepted  as  having  any  self- 
evident  and  transparent  claim.  In  conceiving  of  life  as  most 
profitably  spent  in  "swallowing  one's  disgusts,  and  doing  faith- 
fully the  ugly  commanded  work'* — a  task  for  the  value  of 
which  one  has  to  trust  his  superiors, — Carlyle,  for  all  his  pro- 
fessed concern  for  the  human  soul,  is  really  looking  to  the  ex- 
ternal fact  rather  than  the  inner.  "The  vital  point  is  not 
who  decides,"  he  writes,  "but  what  is  decided  on."  By  no 
means;  the  vital  point  is  to  develop  a  race  of  men  who  are 
capable  of  deciding  rightly.  And  since  he  is  too  much  of  a 
realist  not  to  know  that  democracy  is  here  to  stay,  for  Carlyle 
in  his  later  days  the  whole  world  has  gone  hopelessly  wrong, 
and  there  is  nothing  to  do  but  wrap  himself  in  his  prophet's 
mantle,  and  predict  the  dreadful  evils  that  are  to  come  of  it, 
with  slight  expectation  that  his  words  will  be  heeded  or  do 
good.  With  all  his  certain  confidence  in  the  goodness  and 
justice  of  things,  to  all  practical  intents  he  turns  out  a  pessi- 
mist; whatever  may  be  the  conditions  in  the  eternal  world,  so 


New  England  Transcendentalism        213 

far  as  the  eye  can  look  ahead  in  this  actual  world  he  sees  every- 
thing going  to  the  dogs. 

5.  At  the  same  time  that  Carlyle  was  preaching  trans- 
cendentalism in  England,  a  more  general  movement,  drawing 
on  somewhat  similar  sources  of  inspiration  in  spite  of  its  con- 
nection with  an  individualism  in  the  sharpest  contrast  with 
Carlyle's  hero-worship,  was  having  an  interesting  career  in 
America.  New  England  Transcendentalism  is  both  a  doctrine, 
and  a  life.  It  "denounces  materialism  in  philosophy,  formaHsm 
in  religion,  utilitarianism  in  personal  and  social  ethics.  It  is 
a  vindication  of  soul  against  sense,  spirit  against  letter,  faith 
against  rite,  heroism  and  nobleness  against  petty  expediencies  of 
the  market."  The  central  article  of  its  creed  is  the  autonomous 
and  creative  activity  of  the  individual  soul,  which  stands  at  the 
center  of  things  as  the  source  of  all  values  and  the  touchstone 
of  all  truth.  Self-culture  therefore,  in  the  largest  sense,  became 
the  main  business  of  the  Transcendentalist.  The  ideal  has 
its  dangers,  and  these  were  not  absent  in  the  history  of  the 
movement.  Even  in  Emerson,  the  profound  reverence  with 
which  he  approaches  the  sanctity  of  the  inner  self  is  a  failure 
in  perfect  intellectual  poise,  due  to  too  absolute  a  sense  of  the 
universal  importance  of  that  peculiar  intellectual  ferment 
through  which  New  England  happened  to  be  passing,  and  al- 
most as  naive  at  times  as  Jones  Very's  profession  that  he  felt 
it  an  honor  to  wash  his  own  face,  being  as  it  was  the  temple  of 
the  Spirit.  But  on  the  whole  the  movement  was  a  healthy  one. 
In  spite  of  an  obvious  logic  which  tended  to  make  the  Tran- 
scendentalist draw  back  from  practical  reforms,  his  sympathies 
were  on  the  side  of  righteous  causes,  more  particularly  when 
they  stood  for  the  enfranchising  of  the  human  spirit,  and  did 
not  run  to  social  or  governmental  machinery.  Thus  he  was 
almost  always  to  be  found  in  the  anti-slavery  ranks,  while  the 
movement  for  the  emancipation  of  women  was  a  favorite  with 
him. 


i 


214        English  and  American  Philosophy 

Of  the  figures  prominent  in  the  movement,  that  of  Bronson 
Alcott  is  the  most  picturesque,  as  well  as  in  some  ways  very 
typical.  The  center  of  his  "system"  appears  to  have  been 
the  doctrine  of  matter  as  the  refuse,  the  residuum  of  Spirit, 
X  /  and  the  genesis  of  Nature  through  the  lapse  of  personal  beings 
from  holiness ;  and  he  makes  much  of  an  insight  into  the  spine 
as  the  type  of  all  Nature.  More  definite  are  the  practical  de- 
ductions from  his  idealism.  Thus  manuring  is  a  base,  cor- 
rupting, and  unjust  mode  of  forcing  Nature.  A  distinction  is 
made  between  vegetables  which  aspire  or  grow  into  the  air, 
and  the  baser  products  which  grow  downward  into  the  earth — 
potatoes,  beets  and  radishes, — of  which  he  would  not  allow 
the  use.  The  canker  worms,  again,  that  infest  the  apple  trees 
are  not  to  be  molested ;  they  have  the  same  right  to  the  apples 
that  man  has.  In  spite  of  these  idiosyncracies,  however,  Al- 
cott at  his  best  must  by  all  accounts  have  had  something  of 
a  genius  for  conversation  of  a  certain  sort.  This  sort  of 
conversation  is  indeed  the  issue  to  which  Transcendentalism 
seems  naturally  to  gravitate,  and  its  character — of  stimula- 
tion without  precision — is  symptomatic  of  the  intellectual  limi- 
tations of  the  movement.  Another  representative  figure  is 
that  of  Margaret  Fuller,  who  embodies  typically  the  craving 
for  culture  and  intellectual  distinction  under  conditions  to 
which  it  is  a  little  alien,  and  which  lend  it  therefore  a  lively 
appreciation  of  its  own  virtue  and  rarity. 

6.  It  is  Emerson,  however,  who  gives  the  movement  its 
chief  significance,  and  in  whom  all  its  features  of  permanent 
value  may  be  seen  at  their  best.  Emerson's  method  may  not 
seem  at  first  to  lend  itself  to  a  straightforward  presentation  of 
his  beliefs.  It  is  seldom  that  he  argues;  he  sees  truth  rather, 
and  sets  down  what  he  sees  as  it  comes  to  him.  For  consis- 
tency he  professedly  cares  nothing;  it  is  the  "hobgoblin  of  little 
minds."  Nevertheless  this  method  of  Emerson's  is  after  all 
perhaps  the  best  clue  to  his  philosophy.  For  intuition,  the  flash 
of  immediate  insight  into  truth  universal  and  divine,  is  not 


--) 


R,  W,  Emerson  215 

simply  the  one  true  way  of  knowledge;  it  is  life  itself,  the 
only  true  kind  of  existence  as  well.  Truth,  eternal  and  neces- 
sary— this  is  God,  reality,  being.  It  follows  that  a  true  phi- 
losophy is  bound  to  be  idealistic.  The  Universe  is  the  exter- 
nalization  of  the  Soul.  The  earth  and  the  heavenly  bodies, 
physics  and  chemistry,  which  we  sensually  treat  as  if  they  were 
self-existent,  are  in  truth  only  the  retinue  of  our  own  being. 
Nature  is  the  incarnation  of  a  thought,  and  turns  to  a  thought 
again,  as  ice  becomes  water  and  gas.  "Every  chemical  change, 
every  change  of  vegetation  from  the  first  principle  of  growth 
in  the  eye  of  the  leaf  to  the  tropical  forest  and  antediluvian  coal 
mine,  every  animal  function  from  the  sponge  up  to  Hercules, 
shall  hint  or  thunder  to  man  the  laws  of  right  and  wrong,  and 
echo  the  Ten  Commandments." 

If  one  asks  more  precisely  what  is  the  relation  of  the  indi- 
vidual person  to  this  eternal  Truth  that  constitutes  the  soul  of 
the  universe,  the  answer  follows  again  from  the  nature  of  the 
experience  in  which  truth  is  revealed.  The  immediate  in- 
tuition of  spiritual  truth  carries  with  it,  as  an  experience,  two 
distinctive  characters;  insight  into  truth  is  universal,  and  it  is 
spontaneous.  The  truth  experience  overrides  all  particulars; 
and  when  a  truth  reveals  itself  to  us,  it  commonly  ap- 
pears to  come,  too,  as  a  revelation.  We  cannot  get  it  by 
striving,  by  willing,  by  agonizing,  as  we  may  particular  facts 
of  observation.  Suddenly  we  find  our  minds  illuminated; 
but  how  we  came  to  see  we  cannot  fully  explain.  These  char- 
acters which  truth  reveals,  Emerson  interprets  through  his 
theory  of  an  identity  of  the  human  soul  with  the  World  Soul. 
Man  can  understand  truth  because  truth  is  in  its  essence 
everywhere  one  and  the  same.  In  the  vision  of  spiritual  mean- 
ing we  do  not  simply  know  about  reality;  we  are  reality,  we 
conjoin  center  with  center.  My  insight  is  not  my  own  private 
possession;  it  is  the  flowing  through  me  of  the  great  tide  of 
Being.  "Standing  on  the  bare  ground,  my  head  bathed  in 
the  blithe  air,  and  uplifted  into  infinite  space,  all  mean  egotism 


// 


f/ 


2i6        English  and  American  Philosophy 

vanishes.  I  become  a  tran^arent  eyeball.  I  am  nothing,  I 
see  all;  the  currents  of  the  universal  being  circulate  through 
me;  I  am  part  and  particle  of  God." 

The  ethics  which  Emerson  deduces  from  such  a  conception 
is  first  of  all  one  of  self-dependence.  Speak  your  latent  con- 
viction, and  it  shall  be  the  universal  sense.  Imitation  is  sui- 
cide; what  another  announces  I  must  find  true  in  me,  or  wholly 
reject,  and  on  his  word  or  as  his  second,  be  he  who  he  may, 
I  can  accept  nothing.  The  only  right  is  what  is  after  my 
constitution,  the  only  wrong  is  what  is  against  it.  So  of  every- 
thing that  tends  to  limit  us,  and  that  keeps  us  from  trusting 
to  our  own  insight — creeds,  parties,  accepted  ideals,  teachers, 
books,  our  own  past  even.  It  is  this  that  on  the  whole  consti- 
tutes the  most  engaging  aspect  of  Emerson's  teaching,  and 
lends  to  his  pages  their  tonic  quality.  As  the  more  positive 
supplement  to  this  there  is,  again,  the  continual  insistence  on 
the  potential  infinity  of  the  self,  and  the  demand  that  we  be 
ever  going  on  to  something  new;  the  one  great  evil  is  to  rest 
satisfied,  and  the  only  sin  is  limitation.  It  is  one  natural  conse- 
quence of  this  strong  individualistic  emphasis,  that  Emerson 
should  be  inclined  to  depreciate  the  importance  that  modern 
times  have  assigned  to  humanitarian  and  social  activities; 
"causes"  represent  an  outer  rather  than  an  inner  claim,  and  a 
man's  first  duty  is  to  himself. 

7.  For  this  last  disposition  there  is,  however,  another  reason 
also,  which  goes  back  again  to  Emerson's  Platonism.  "Expres- 
sion'^ is,  to  be  sure,  for  Emerson  essential;  but  expression  is 
to  be  found  not  merely,  or  chiefly,  in  outer  and  practical 
changes.  "That  hankering  after  an  overt  and  practical  effect 
seems  to  me,"  he  writes,  "an  apostasy.  In  good  earnest,  I 
am  willing  to  spare  this  most  unnecessary  deal  of  doing.  Life 
wears  to  me  a  visionary  face.  Hardest,  roughest  action  is 
visionary  also.  People  disparage  knowing  and  the  intellectual 
life,  and  urge  doing.  I  am  very  content  with  knowing,  if  only 
I  could  know.    I  have  not  found  that  much  was  gained  by 


R,  W.  Emerson  217 

manipular  attempts  to  realize  the  world  of  thought."  Why  in- 
deed should  we  be  at  such  pains  for  this  or  that  particular 
end,  when  presently  the  dream  will  scatter,  and  we  shall  burst 
into  universal  power?  One  cannot  say  indeed  without  reserve 
that  Emerson  neglects  facts.  He  preaches  a  catholic  acceptance 
of  whatever  comes  to  our  net  in  experience;  and  he  exalts  the 
realized  idea,  the  idea  to  which  the  world  spirit  has  given 
actual  expression,  over  the  mere  thought  in  our  heads.  But 
still  it  is  for  the  sake  of  the  law  that  the  fact  exists ;  and  given 
the  law,  it  ceases  to  have  any  further  significance.  Nor  do 
"facts"  represent  for  Emerson  primarily  anything  in  the  way  of 
first-hand  experience.  They  are  reached  through  the  intellect, 
and  the  intellect  at  work  chiefly  upon  books  and  conversation; 
and  it  is  the  intellectual  experience  therefore  that  he  really 
prizes.  "I  looked  upon  trades,  politics,  and  domestic  life," 
Emerson  writes  in  the  Journal,  "as  games  to  keep  men  amused, 
and  hinder  them  from  asking  cui  bono?  until  their  eyes  and 
minds  are  grown";  then  they  become  superfluous.  The  prac- 
tical consequences  are  apparent;  if  the  individual  instance  is 
so  trivial  alongside  the  principle  of  the  thing,  which  already  is 
realized  in  the  eternal  world,  what  seems  to  be  the  use  of  both- 
ering with  little  peddling  changes  and  reforms? 

8.  It  is  very  hard  to  draw  here  in  words  a  line  that  will 
hold  in  any  strict  way.  "I  know,"  writes  Emerson,  "against 
all  appearances,  that  the  universe  can  receive  no  detriment, 
that  there  is  a  remedy  for  every  wrong  and  a  satisfaction  for 
every  goal";  and  without  some  such  ultimate  faith  life  always 
runs  the  risk  of  being  paralyzed.  This  buoyant  and  placid 
way  of  meeting  life,  which  dwells  upon  the  eternal  nature  of 
the  good,  and  keeps  the  notion  of  harm  and  failure  from  the 
mind,  has  undoubtedly  something  to  be  said  in  its  behalf,  as 
is  shown  by  its  career — largely  influenced  by  Emerson — in 
Christian  Science  and  similar  movements.  Still  there  is  a  wide 
difference  between  saying  that  evil  is  not  ultimate, — that  it 
may  be  conquered,  that  is,  by  one  who  sets  himself  to  do  it, — 


2i8       English  and  American  Philosophy 

and  saying  that  it  is  already  overcome,  that  it  simply  is  not, 
and  so  that  we  have  no  active  duty  toward  it  except  to  deny 
it.  There  is  no  crime  to  the  intellect,  Emerson  writes.  Sin 
seen  from  the  thought  is  a  diminution  or  less,  seen  from  the 
conscience  or  will  it  is  pravity  or  bad;  and  the  implication  is 
that  the  latter  attitude  is  less  fundamental  than  the  former, 
and  that  the  sufficient  reminder  therefore  is  not  to  try  to  better 
things,  but  merely  to  recognize  that  the  good  already  is  safe. 
"Misery  is  superficial,  and  the  remedy,  when  it  can  be  secured, 
of  presenting  to  the  mind  universal  Truth  is  a  perfect  one." 
Logically  this  can  only  be  intended  to  throw  cold  water  upon 
our  active  endeavor  to  cast  our  own  weight  into  the  scale. 
To  the  will,  evil  must  always  be  more  than  a  negation;  we 
do  not  fight  with  shadows,  nor  in  the  act  of  fighting  can  that 
which  opposes  us  seem  nothing  but  a  shadow. 

There  is  another  criticism  also  to  which  such  a  philosophy 
of  optimism  is  exposed ;  on  the  intellectual  side,  it  shows  a  de- 
fective appreciation  of  certain  qualities  of  the  real  world. 
Granting  that  we  ought  to  adopt  an  attitude  of  courage  toward 
the  world,  there  is  no  advantage  in  ignoring  real  difficulties, 
in  refusing  to  admit  our  weaknesses,  in  talking  as  if  in  truth 
the  will  were  unlimited  and  above  all  conditions.  The  simple 
answer  is  that  the  facts  are  not  so;  and  if  in  order  to  spur 
on  the  spirit  of  self-reliance,  and  avoid  spoiling  the  force 
of  our  exhortation,  we  talk  as  if  they  were  so,  we  lay  our- 
selves open  to  the  risk  that  is  always  present  when  we  shut 
our  eyes  to  realities.  Thus  do  all  things,  so  Emerson  in  one 
form  or  another  is  constantly  declaring,  preach  the  indif- 
ferency  of  circumstances.  But  circumstances  are  not  indiffer- 
ent, and  it  is  no  use  pretending  they  are.  Really  everybody 
knows  that  there  are  limits, — though  doubtless  we  ought  not 
to  be  too  hasty  in  setting  these, — to  anyone's  power  of  con- 
trolling hostile  circumstances;  and  that  apart  from  favorable 
outward  conditions  to  call  forth  our  powers,  they  will  remain 


R.  W,  Emerson  219 

in  part  at  least  unexpressed.  Not  everything  can  develop 
wholly  from  within,  if  indeed  anything  can.  And  if  fate  re- 
fuses favorable  conditions,  no  amount  of  talk  about  the  in- 
finity of  man  and  the  virtue  of  self-reliance  can  supply  the 
lack.  One  may  note  in  this  connection  Emerson^s  repugnance 
to  the  notion  that  bodily  conditions  limit  the  powers  of  the 
spirit, — ^passing  in  our  own  day  into  the  doctrine  of  the  suffi- 
ciency of  mental  treatment, — and  his  repudiation  of  the 
physician  and  the  biologist. 

And  this  becomes  most  serious  when  it  determines  our  atti- 
tude to  other  men.  Here  at  least  the  readiness  to  sink  the 
outer  in  the  inner,  and  ignore  the  importance  of  favorable 
surroundings  for  the  best  development  of  the  race,  is  not  only 
to  give  up  the  possibility  of  any  explanation  of  the  pressing 
facts  of  man's  actual  life,  but  it  is,  through  a  dependence  upon 
the  sole  method  of  the  inspirational  book  or  lecture,  to  put  one- 
self out  of  sympathy  with  all  less  absolute  attempts  to  do  a 
little  something  toward  righting  the  many  wrong  things  that 
we  find  about  us.  Emerson's  is  one  way,  and  within  its  sphere 
a  useful  one.  But  in  turning  it,  against  his  own  warning, — 
he  speaks  of  the  "over-faith  of  each  man  in  the  importance  of 
what  he  has  to  do  or  say," — into  a  philosophy,  and  interpreting 
the  universe  after  the  image  of  his  own  private  and  special 
type  of  interest,  he  is  taking  a  questionable  path.  That  he 
is  himself  a  "seeing  eye  rather  than  a  helping  hand"  is  a  suffi- 
cient excuse  for  his  plan  of  life;  but  it  does  not  forthwith  justify 
the  metaphysical  judgment  that  to  see  is  the  end  for  which 
everything  exists.  This  may  possibly  be;  but  it  is  at  least 
a  point  against  it  if  its  logic  seems  to  belittle  the  facts  of  our 
ordinary  life  and  endeavor.  For  it  is  "only  the  finite  that  has 
wrought  and  suffered;  the  infinite  lies  sheltered  in  smiling 
repose."  When  a  philosopher  begins  to  talk  about  only  the 
finite,  it  is  well  to  be  on  one's  guard. 


220       English  and  American  Philosophy 

§  2.    T.  H.  Green 

1.  It  is  of  course  only  in  certain  rather  elusive  aspects  that 
the  thinking  of  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  as  of  Coleridge  in  the 
earlier  part  of  the  century,  can  be  brought  into  connection  with 
the  actual  metaphysical  apparatus  of  German  Idealism  to  which 
attention  has  now  to  be  directed.  The  first  serious  attempt, 
backed  by  an  adequate  knowledge  of  the  literature  in  detail, 
to  naturalize  this  philosophy  in  the  English  world,  is  Hutchin- 
son Stirling's  Secret  of  Hegel.  In  Stirling,  the  religious  and 
social  interests  which,  in  a  staider  form,  were  to  supply  the 
motive  for  the  thinking  of  Green  and  most  of  his  earlier  dis- 
ciples, take  the  shape  of  a  vivacious  attack  upon  the  spirit 
of  the  Aufklarung, — for  Stirling  personified  more  particularly 
in  Mr.  Buckle, — the  theory  of  evolution,  and  the  new  po- 
litical economy  with  its  glorification  of  individualism  and 
laissez-faire;  and  he  hails  the  philosophic  vision  of  a  rational 
whole  of  things — HegeFs  "concrete  universal" — as  a  powerful 
weapon  for  the  overthrow  of  the  materialism  and  self-will  of 
an  industrial  society  based  on  wealth,  which  had  supplanted  the 
better  and  saner  culture  of  England  in  the  past.  Stirling's  own 
style  does  not  escape  the  obscurity  of  his  German  models, 
ultimate  difficulties  are  only  lightly  touched  upon  by  him, 
and  more  orthodoxy  in  religion  is  credited  to  Hegel  than 
probably  is  justified;  still  in  the  large  the  book  is  an  able 
anticipation  of  the  change  of  spirit  which  was  on  the  point 
of  taking  place  in  academic  English  philosophy. 

2.  The  most  powerful  single  influence  in  securing  to  Abso- 
lute Idealism  the  position,  which  it  continued  to  hold  until 
into  the  twentieth  century,  of  an  almost  official  philosophy  in 
England  and  America,  is  that  of  Thomas  Hill  Green;  and 
its  rapid  success  is  in  the  first  place  due,  as  has  been  said,  to 
the  fact  that  it  seemed  to  offer  a  profounder  and  more  potent 
means  of  overthrowing  the  prevailing  naturalistic  creed  than 


J".  H.  Green  221 

was  supplied  by  antagonists  already  in  the  field.  The  effort 
of  British  empiricism, — at  least  so  Green  interprets  it,  by 
identifying  it  with  a  single  logical  motive  in  particular,  most 
prominent  in  Hume, — is  to  eliminate  the  work  of  "mind"  from 
the  world  of  knowledge,  and  reduce  the  object  of  knowledge  to 
bare  passive  sensations.  These  the  mind  may  proceed  to 
deal  with  in  the  way  of  reproduction,  combination,  and  ab- 
straction. But  the  sole  reality  continues  to  be  the  material  of 
fleeting  individual  feelings;  and  the  conceptions  which  seem 
to  be  implicated  in  our  everyday  notions  of  the  world, — sub- 
stance, causality,  and  the  like, — are  illegitimate  fictions  which 
the  mind  imposes.  The  ideal  of  knowledge  is,  accordingly,  to 
be  found  in  the  passive  acceptance  of  what  is  forced  upon  usj 
in  feeling,  denuded  of  the  "relations"  that  come  from  the  mind^s 
own  activity;  for  if  these  are  fictions,  then  the  more  the  intelli- 
gence works  upon  the  material  of  sense  the  further  from  reality 
it  carries  us.  The  significance  of  Hume  lies  in  the  fact  that  by 
taking  this  ideal  of  method  seriously,  he  brought  to  light  its 
inevitable  outcome- — that  knowledge,  namely,  is  impossible. 
And  the  only  way  of  escape  is  to  turn  our  back  upon  it  squarely, 
and  recognize,  with  Kant,  that  the  relational  activity  of  the^' 
mind  is  involved  in  the  very  existence  of  a  real  world,  so 
that  without  it  reality  is  a  meaningless  term.  The  true  method 
of  philosophy  is  not  to  turn  our  eyes  inward  to  an  analysis  of 
our  subjective  consciousness, — by  this  path  we  only  throw 
doubt  upon  all  knowledge  alike;  it  is  to  examine  reality  itself 
as  this  forms  the  content  of  the  knowledge  we  indubiuably 
possess, — in  science,  morality,  art,  religion, — and  find  out 
what  its  possession  implies. 

And  in  this  way,  following  Kant  again,  we  discover  that  the 
possibility  of  knowledge  depends  upon  the  presence  of  a  prin4 
ciple  of  unity,  not  identical  with  the  succession  of  events,  \ 
through  which  the  flux  of  feeling  is  constructed  into  a  real  "ob- 
ject," and  ultimately  into  a  universe.  The  very  meaning  of 
"reality"  carries  the  consequence  that  nothing  in  any  sense 


222        English  and  American  Philosophy 

is  real  for  us  which  does  not  enter  into  this  organized  unity  of 
a  knowledge  system.  Once  see  this,  and  we  are  rid  at  one 
blow  of  two  fetiches  which  empiricism  has  cherished — the 
notion  of  isolated  sensations  out  of  which  an  illusory  world  is 
built  up  by  external  association,  and  the  notion  of  a  reality 
beyond  experience  which  is  in  its  essence  unknowable.  Knowl- 
edge does  not  have  its  origin  in  mere  feelings,  because  mere 
feelings  are  unthinkable  and  unreal ;  a  feeling  is  at  all  only  as 
it  is  this  or  that  feeling  in  particular,  and  it  cannot  be  some- 
thing in  particular  except  as  it  is  part  of  a  definite  relational 
context  involving  distinction  from,  and  connection  with,  other 
particulars.  The  being  of  a  thing  is  never  adequately  ex- 
pressed by  saying,  It  is  just  itself  and  nothing  else;  for  this 
would  mean  that  it  is  inexpressible.    Actually  a  sensation,  in- 

j  stead  of  being  the  prius  in  the  way  of  knowledge,  is  a  relatively 
late  product  of  analysis;  it  is  something  we  discover  as  an 
element  always  in  a  larger  whole.  So  an  unknowable  Absolute, 
again,  is  simply  a  contradiction  in  terms,  since  we  presuppose 
that  we  can  know  it  when  we  talk  about  it  even  as  existing. 
The  truth  is  that  the  relativity  philosophers  are  looking  in  the 
wrong  direction.  The  fault  with  an  Absolute  characterized  as 
mere  being  of  existence  is  not  that  we  cannot  know  it;  we  can 
know  "being"  perfectly,  since  there  is  nothing  in  the  bare 
abstract  character  of  being  to  know  except  just  this  character 
itself.    The  trouble  is  not  with  its  unknowability,  but  with  its 

/  abstractness.  The  true  nature  of  reality  is  to  be  found,  not 
by  stripping  off  all  its  special  features,  but,  rather,  by  remedy- 
ing its  partialness  and  incompleteness,  and  making  knowl- 
edge more  and  more  concrete  and  all-embracing,  until  we  have 
a  fully  rounded  system  in  which  every  identical  aspect  of  the 
real  world  is  incorporated  in  its  proper  place.  This  concrete 
Itiniversal,  this  manifold  in  unity,  is  reality,  or  truth;  and  noth- 
ing isolated  and  barely  particular,  nothing  outside  the  unitary 
system,  has  any  being  by  itself.  The  empiricists,  accordingly, 
ignore  the  one  thing  most   essential   and   fundamental — the 


r.  H,  Green  227^ 

spiritual  thread  of  unity  which  is  necessary  if  we  are  to  have 
reality  at  all. 

3.  From  the  recognition  of  this  spiritual  fact  of  the  unity 
of  knowledge,  as  identified  by  Green  with  the  unity  of  "self- 
consciousness,"  flow  the  significant  consequences  for  religion 
and  ethics  in  which  he  is  primarily  interested.  The  tendency 
of  science  had  been  to  reduce  man  to  a  purely  animal  life  in 
the  midst  of  an  indifferent  universe,  out  of  which  the  human 
race  has  been  developed  by  an  unintelligent  process  of  natural 
selection.  Now  this  may  indeed  be  true  of  the  physical  organ- 
ism. But  the  real  man,  the  essential  self  as  an  intelligent  bearer 
of  knowledge,  cannot  possibly  be  a  creature  of  the  natural 
world  for  this  simple  reason,  that  there  would  be  no  natural 
world  were  not  the  spiritual  principle  of  self-consciousness  al- 
ready presupposed.  The  world  is  real  only  for  knowledge;  and 
that  which  is  necessary  to  constitute  a  world  cannot  therefore 
be  the  passive  product  of  this  world.  The  unity  of  phenomena 
cannot  be  one  of  the  phenomena  unified;  the  consciousness  of 
combination  is  not  a  combined  consciousness.  We  can  know  a 
temporal  series  of  facts  as  a  series  only  as  the  facts  are  held 
together  through  something  present  alike  to  each  of  them,  and 
itself,  consequently,  out  of  time;  and  such  a  timeless  principle 
can  never  be  a  result  of  the  process  of  change.  Since  there- 
fore man  has  it  in  him  to  know  phenomena,  he  is  necessarily 
not  himself  a  phenomenon;  the  true  self,  as  is  shown  by  the 
very  possibility  of  scientific  knowledge,  is  something  immaterial 
and  immovable,  neither  in  time  nor  in  space,  eternally  one  with 
itself.  However,  it  is  not  of  course  the  empirical  self,  the 
mere  private  individual,  which  thus  exists  outside  of  the  time 
process  and  of  the  natural  order  that  belongs  to  time.  The 
empirical  self  is  just  one  item  in  the  natural  world, — not  an 
isolated  item,  since  there  is  nothing  isolated,  but  a  minor  por- 
tion of  the  total  universe;  it  is  not  the  knower,  therefore,  but 
an  object  of  knowledge,  a  part  of  the  knowledge  content.  The 
true  self  or  knower  is,  again,  that  principle  of  universality, — 


224        English  and  American  Philosophy 

timeless  because  the  unity  which  alone  makes  a  succession  of 
events  possible  cannot  itself  be  one  successive  moment  among 
others, — by  virtue  of  which  reality  is  brought  within  a  compre- 
hensive systen^. 

And  it  follows  that,  since  nothing  can  be  real  for  knowledge 
except  as  it  comes  within  this  unified  whole,  there  can  be  but 
one  Self — the  universal  Consciousness,  or  God;  God  is  the 
necessary  postulate  which  knowledge  requires  if  it  is  to  have 
any  validity  or  truth.  Green's  argument  is,  to  repeat,  that 
reality  has  no  meaning  apart  from  a  unity  of  knowledge;  and 

^  such  a  unifying  principle  we  nowhere  find  except  in  self-con- 
sciousness. But  since  it  is  clear  that  self-consciousness  in 
its  mere  private  capacity  does  not  make  reality,  and  that  a 
world  already  constituted  by  thought  exists  prior  to  our  in- 
dividual acquaintance  with  it,  we  must  suppose  that  our  true 
self,  which  alone  explains  how  knowledge  for  us  is  possible, 
is  identical  with  that  eternally  existing  Self  which  religion  calls 
God.  God  is  thus  no  Other  over  against  whom  man  stands 
in  a  relation  of  externality,  and  whom  he  knows  indirectly  and 
inferentially.  That  would  be  to  make  God  himself  an  object, 
and  not  the  constitutive  source  on  which  all  objects  alike  de- 
pend.    The  very  principle  of  knowledge  in  us  which  consti- 

J  tutes  our  essential  nature  is  God's  nature  likewise;  in  knowl- 
edge, man  participates  in  the  actual  life  of  God.  Meanwhile 
the  particular  human  self  is  a  compound  of  the  finite  and  the 
infinite;  it  is  an  animal  organism  used  as  the  vehicle  of  an 
eternally  complete  consciousness.  But  even  our  human  knowl- 
edge, again,  is  not  oj  a  reality  different  from  itself;  reality  is 
the  same  wherever  it  appears.  Our  knowledge  is  the  revelation 
of  actually  existing  ideas,  through  which  possibilities  of  them 
\in  us  are  gradually  actualized;  God  is  the  realization  of  the 
possibilities  of  man. 

4.  This  incompleteness  of  man's  life,  when  taken  in  con- 
nection with  its  potential  infinity.  Green  turns  to  account  in 
his  theory  of  the  ethical  experience.    As  sensation  is  merely  an 


T.  H,  Green  225 

animal  function,  and  does  not  become  an  element  in  knowledge 
until  it  is  taken  up  into  the  unity  of  the  self,  so  desire  has  as 
such  no  ethical  significance,  and  enters  into  moral  conduct 
only  as  it,  too,  is  related  to  the  self,  and  becomes  a  form  of 
self-realization.  An  animal  want  or  instinct  is  nothing  but 
a  blind  propulsion;  before  it  represents  a  conscious  desire 
or  motive,  it  must  become  the  presentation  of  a  wanted  object. 
But  an  object,  it  has  appeared,  involves  the  work  of  that  uni- 
versal spiritual  principle  which  is  not  an  aspect  of  the  "natural" 
life  at  all.  And  if  conscious  motives,  since  they  involve  the 
activity  of  spirit,  are  thus  not  of  natural  origin — are  not 
phenomena, — the  human  will  must  be  regarded  as  a  timeless  V 
act,  and,  therefore,  free,  since  that  which  makes  temporal 
succession  possible  cannot  itself  be  determined  by  any  event  in 
time.  The  ethical  end,  accordingly,  is  not  to  be  identified  with 
pleasure;  mere  pleasure,  indeed,  as  a  separate  bit  of  feeling, 
has  already  been  shown  to  have  no  reality  at  all.  The  true 
end  can  only  be  found  in  the  satisfaction  of  that  spiritual  self 
which  it  is  impossible  should  be  realized  in  any  isolated  event 
in  time,  or  any  number  of  such  events;  it  is  a  satisfaction  "on 
the  whole,"  a  permanent  well-being  that  consists  in  the  full 
realization  of  human  powers,  and  that  does  not  pass  away  there- 
fore with  this  or  that  transitory  feeling.  Man  does  not  live 
for  pleasure,  but  for  the  realization  of  his  capacities  as  a  uni- 
fied and  spiritual  self. 

There  is  another  consequence  of  this  conception  of  the  good 
as  the  realization  of  a  non-natural  or  spiritual  principle  which 
constitutes  the  true  self;  it  implies  that  man  is  not  a  separate 
individual,  but  a  member  of  a  spiritual  community,  attaining 
his  good  only  in  connection  with  the  lives  of  his  fellows,  whose 
self-realization  is  included  in  his  own.  Moral  growth  consists 
in  the  progressive  discovery  that  the  things  which,  in  nature, 
and  our  fellow  men,  and  the  institutions  of  society,  at  first  - 
had  seemed  an  external  hindrance  to  the  freedom  of  the  in- 
dividual's self-assertion,  are  in  reality  themselves  a  means 


226        English  and  American  Philosophy 

to  his  development;  their  appropriation  extends  indefinitely 
the  boundaries  of  the  self,  until  in  the  end  we  come  to  see  that 
nothing  whatever  is  alien  to  the  true  inner  life.  And  this 
brings  us  back  to  religion.  For  the  idea  which  governs  this 
process  of  self-realization  is  the  complete  attainment  of  that 
identity  with  the  universal  Self  which  is  implicit  in  the  fact 
of  knowledge.  It  is  true  that  what  God's  nature  is,  we  cannot 
know  beyond  its  very  partial  revelation  up  to  date  in  the  ex- 
isting spiritual  products  of  human  history;  and  so  the  ideal 
seems  to  be  lacking  in  concrete  directions  for  our  guidance. 
But  at  least  it  tells  us  that  we  have  not  yet  attained;  and  in 
this  recognition  of  an  eternal  "more,"  and  the  pressure  which 
it  puts  upon  us,  we  have  the  source  of  all  moral  progress. 

5.  In  turning  now  to  a  consideration  of  Green's  idealism,  a 
possible  ambiguity  needs  first  to  be  pointed  out  in  connection 
with  the  nature  of  his  eternal  principle.  There  are  two  inter- 
pretations of  the  "unity  of  consciousness"  which,  though  con- 
nected, are  not  identical.  The  first  and  perhaps  most  natural 
way  to  understand  the  phrase  would  be  in  terms  of  the  psy- 
chological unity  of  that  stream  of  conscious  experiencing  which 
constitutes  what  we  know  as  the  inner  life  of  an  empirical  self. 
It  is  beyond  question  that  I,  as  a  particular  person  who  thinks 
and  feels  and  acts  in  the  midst  of  a  world  of  physical  processes 
and  of  other  persons,  do  find  the  various  contents  of  my  life 
held  together  in  some  fashion  as  a  whole;  there  is  a  realization 
of  unity,  more  or  less  complete,  running  through  the  succession 
of  the  fleeting  states  of  my  being.  In  this  meaning,  then,  the 
principle  would  represent  a  psychological  fact,  empirically  dis- 
coverable, which  helps  to  characterize  that  particular  portion 
of  reality  which  I  call  a  human  consciousness. 

But  there  is  also  another  meaning  that  might  be  given  to  the 
principle.  It  is  possible  to  speak  intelligibly  of  "consciousness" 
when  I  intend  to  refer  thus  to  the  immediate  inner  facts  of  life 
that  come  home  to  me  in  feeling  or  direct  awareness, — in  this 
sense  my  private  conscious  life  has  a  unity  of  a  special  or  psy- 


T.  H.  Green  227 

chological  sort  that  does  not  include  the  other  things  and  selves 
that  lie  beyond  its  range;  or  I  may,  again,  call  these  external 
things  themselves  the  objects  of  consciousness,  in  so  far  as  my 
experience  brings  me  into  any  sort  of  cognitive  contact  with 
them.  In  this  second  meaning,  not  my  empirical  self  merely,  ^ 
but  the  whole  range  of  known  realities,  enters  into  the  imity 
of  consciousness  or  experience. 

To  avoid  this  ambiguity  it  will  be  better,  and  at  least  equally 
natural,  to  call  the  latter  unity  always  the  unity  of  knowledge^ 
rather  than  the  unity  of  the  self,  or  of  self-consciousness. 
Meanwhile  it  is  the  second  of  the  two  standpoints  that  bulks 
very  much  the  larger  in  Green's  exposition.  This  alone  lends 
itself  directly  to  the  belief  in  an  eternal  consciousness  that 
embraces  all  reality;  the  mere  recognition  of  the  unity  of  my 
life  palpably  falls  short  of  such  an  outcome.  And  accordingly 
the  first  and  least  ambiguous  formulation  of  the  idealistic  thesis 
will  be,  not  that  reality  is  intelligence,  or  a  rational  self,  but 
that  it  is  intelligible,  or  rational — is  capable,  that  is,  of  being  ^ 
known,  and  known  as  in  some  sense  a  unified  and  related  whole. 
My  self,  from  which  the  notion  of  "self -consciousness"  is  of 
course  derived,  we  may  indeed  turn  to  for  a  possible  clue  to 
the  nature  of  this  knowledge  unity.  But  taken  as  it  stands, 
and  apart  from  the  ambiguous  identification  of  the  two  mean- 
ings of  the  word,  it  gives  us  not  my  selj,  but  my  knowledge, 
as  that  which  first  suggests  itself  as  an  interpretative  concept;  ^ 
and  we  are  getting  ahead  of  the  argument  if  we  take  for 
granted,  either  that  the  unity  of  a  knowledge  content  consti- 
tutes the  unity  of  the  self,  or  that  it  could  not  exist  in  the 
absence  of  a  self.  The  fact  from  which  we  start  is  the  fact  that 
nothing  is  real  for  knowledge  except  in  terms  of  rational  rela-  t 
tionships  within  some  more  comprehensive  unity  of  system; 
what  the  status  of  this  system  is  we  have  still  to  inquire. 

6.  And  now  this  suggests  an  intelligible  meaning  that  might 
attach  to  what  the  idealist  has  to  say  about  the  identification 
of  reality  with  knowledge  or  intelligence,  without  making  it 


228        English  and  American  Philosophy 

necessary  to  give  up  our  ordinary  realistic  prejudices,  or  to 
commit  ourselves  to  a  special  metaphysics.  There  clearly  is 
a  sense  in  which  knowledge,  or  science,  may  be  regarded  as 
coextensive  with  reality,  or  at  least  with  reality  in  so  far  as  it 
possesses  any  possible  interest  for  man ;  but  what  sense?  Evi- 
dently this  in  the  first  instance,  that  knowledge  in  some  fashion 
or  other  is  able  to  describe  reality,  by  translating  into  the 
medium  of  terms  and  propositions  its  abstract  qualities,  laws, 
and  characteristics  generally.  In  speaking  of  these  characters 
as  abstract,  a  word  of  caution  may  be  necessary.  It  is  a  sound 
contention  of  the  idealists  that  significant  knowledge  is  not 
abstract  in  the  sense  which  involves  the  progressive  dropping 
out  of  the  specific  features  of  existence.  There  is  every  rea- 
son to  agree  that  the  ideal  of  knowledge  is  a  systematic  whole 
in  which  all  possible  aspects  of  the  world  take  their  place.  But 
in  granting  this  we  still,  unless  we  arbitrarily  abandon  the 

v/ natural  point  of  view,  and  beg  the  whole  philosophical  ques- 
tion, are  dealing  only  with  a  matter  of  logical  content.  It  is 
clear  that  everyday  thinking,  whatever  its  readiness  to  assume 
that  reality  is  intelligible,  and  that  our  knowledge  is  a  perfectly 

/good  account  of  the  real  facts,  is  not  imder  the  slightest  tempta- 
tion to  suppose  that  scientific  or  philosophical  knowledge  as 
such  is  the  universe.  It  is  a  scheme  of  relationships  abstracted 
from  their  presence  in  the  existing  world,  and  held  precipitated 
in  an  ideal  realm  of  human  thought.  And  if  we  are  to  ap- 
prove our  philosophical  opinions  to  the  common-sense  man  who 
dwells  in  tKe  breast  of  each  of  us,  we  are  bound  to  recognize 
that  the  logical  description  which  forms  the  content  of  knowl- 
edge is  the  description  of  a  world  which  has  a  real  existence 
not  resolvable  into  merely  descriptive  terms,  and  which,  there- 
fore, though  it  is  intelligible,  is  not  itself  thought  or  knowledge 
in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  words.  While  it  has  a  nature  to 
which  thought  may  attain,  it  is  not  a  bare  "nature"  and  noth- 
ing more,  inhabiting  a  bodiless  realm  of  timeless  self-identity; 
it  is  an  active,  full-blooded  world  of  real  objects,  producing 


T.  H.  Green  229 

real  effects  in  time.  The  scientist's  formula  may  sum  up  ade- 
quately the  character  of  the  physical  or  the  chemical  fact;  but 
it  is  not  capable  of  acting  as  a  substitute  in  the  world  of  events 
for  real  physical  and  chemical  forces. 

It  will  be  possible,  then,  to  assign  a  meaning  to  much  that 
Green  has  to  say,  without  abandoning  more  familiar  ways  of 
thinking,  if  we  translate  his  statements  about  reality  into  logical 
terms,  and  think,  not  of  what  we  ordinarily  mean  when  we  talk 
of  the  existing  universe,  but  of  that  comprehensive  scheme 
of  relationships,  of  ideal  intellectual  content  divorced  from 
existence,  by  which  scientific  thinking  endeavors  to  set  forth 
the  character  of  the  objects  with  which  in  our  practical  life 
we  come  into  contact.  But  the  very  possibility  of  making 
in  our  thought  this  contrast,  is  a  strong  reason  against  suppos- 
ing too  readily  that  such  a  knowledge  system  is  identically"^ 
reality  itself,  and  that  no  further  question  about  the  relation 
between  reality  and  knowledge  need  arise  to  bother  the  phi- 
losopher. And  if  it  should  appear  that  the  identification  in- 
volves the  confusing  of  real  distinctions  of  thought,  or  that 
it  slurs  over  the  existence  of  important  facts  of  experience  for 
which  it  finds  no  natural  explanation,  it  will  need  to  show  very 
unusual  merits  of  its  own  to  offset  this. 

7.  The  gist  of  Green's  argument,  to  repeat,  is  this,  that  the 
unity  of  knowledge  is  unintelligible  apart  from  the  presence  of 
a  single  timeless  spiritual  principle  which  constitutes  alike  the  ^ 
reality  of  the  self,  and  of  the  universe.  So  long  as  we  keep 
solely  to  the  acknowledged  fact  that  knowledge  is,  or  tends  to 
be,  a  unified  and  related  intellectual  content,  this  is  to  go 
considerably  beyond  what  at  first  sight  is  implied  in  our  datum. 
All  sorts  of  philosophies  have  held  that  reality  can  be  thought 
intelligibly  as  a  whole,  materialistic  as  well  as  spiritualistic. 
All  that  the  logical  postulate  by  itself  demands  is,  that  there 
should  be  relations  binding  things  together,  and  that  these  ^ 
relations  should  be  capable  of  being  thought, — not  that  they 
should  have  their  sole  existence  within  a  unitary  mind.    When 


230        English  and  American  Philosophy 

all  has  been  said  about  the  objectivity  of  relations,  why  might 
it  not  be  possible  that  our  ordinary  view  is  justified  in  sup- 

V  posing  that  the  mind  can  think  that  which  is  not  itself  a 
thought?  why  may  not  relations  be  real  outside  of  a  mind, 
and  yet  be  thinkable?  The  fact  may  not  be  so;  but  it  does 
not  appear  inherently  absurd.  There  is  no  immediate  self- 
evidence  in  the  judgment  that  because  an  influence  passes  from 
the  sun  to  vegetation,  or  because  spring  follows  winter  and 
precedes  summer,  these  groups  of  facts  must  of  necessity  have 
their  sole  being  in  the  unity  of  a  divine  mind.  If  the  idealistic 
thesis  is  to  be  maintained,  it  at  least  will  call  for  more  extended 
argument. 

The  simplest  line  of  reasoning  that  might  be  followed  here 
would  run  something  as  follows:  Since  knowing  is  a  mental 
act,  and  since,  for  purposes  of  thinking,  relations  have  there- 
fore to  be  brought  "within  the  mind,"  we  can  be  sure  they 
are  not  without  an  affinity  of  some  sort  with  the  mental ;  and  so 
we  may  reasonably  use  this  fact  to  interpret  their  standing  in 
the  outer  world,  and  may  conjecture  that  there  also  they  have 
their  reality  in  the  same  mental  form.  This  however  hardly 
represents  the  natural  type  of  argument  that  Greenes  thesis 
calls  for.  At  best  it  leaves  a  dualism  between  the  idea  in  our 
mind  and  its  embodiment  in  a  more  ultimate  mind,  which 
idealism  wishes  to  avoid;  and  since  the  conclusion  is  only  an 
inferential  interpretation  of  a  reality  beyond  our  thought,  it 
gives  merely  a  conjectural  and  analogical  proof  where  idealism 
demands  certainty.  The  real  point  of  Green's  position  is,  that 
in  knowledge  we  have  the  veritable  presence  of  reality  itself, 
and  no  reference  to  a  "beyond"  in  terms  of  finite  thinking; 
has  he  actually  rendered  such  a  thesis  probable? 

8.  The  proof  on  which  Green  ultimately  relies  for  this  is 
implied  rather  than  clearly  stated;  and  it  is  valid  only  as  we 
already  take  for  granted  the  assumption  that  has  been  attribu- 

'     ted  to  him — that  reality  is  nothing  but  a  knowledge  system. 


T,  H.  Green  2^1 

From  this  it  follows  that  we  have  only  to  point  to  an  identity  of 
logical  content  between  man's  knowledge  and  God's  to  break 
down  at  once  any  separation  between  the  two.  This  assumj>- 
tion,  however,  is  of  course  just  what  our  more  familiar  habits 
of  thought  refuse  to  entertain.  We  have  knowledge — this  is 
not  denied ;  and  the  content  of  knowledge  is  a  timeless  system, 
identical  with  itself  under  all  conditions.  But  it  is  timeless  only 
because  for  our  intellectual  purposes  we  have  taken  it  out  of 
the  flux  of  events  in  time,  and  have  translated  everything  into 
ideal  terms  of  logical  content  where  time  itself  now  exists  only 
as  a  timeless  set  of  relationships.  There  is  no  doubt  of  our 
ability  to  do  this;  the  question  is  whether  in  the  result  reality 
still  is  present  in  all  its  fulness. 

9.  In  order  to  deal  with  Green's  answer,  it  will  be  necessary 
now  to  introduce  again  that  notion  of  the  ''self"  which  has 
been  temporarily  ignored.  No  logical  compulsion  seems  to  call 
for  this.  A  knowledge  system  possesses  unity.  But  why  should 
this  unity  be  set  off  in  any  degree  from  the  complex  of  rela- 
tionships that  enter  into  a  unity?  why  is  not  unity  itself  only 
one  aspect  in  the  related  system?  Where  do  we  get  the  right, 
that  is,  to  talk  of  a  spiritual  principle,  an  active  agent,  which 
superinduces  itself  upon  the  relations  and  brings  them  into  a 
whole,  and  which  cannot  itself  be  conditioned  by  any  of  the 
relations  that  result  from  its  "combining  and  unifying  action'7 
The  chief  motive  for  this  in  Green's  case  will  be  found  in  his 
ethical  and  religious  interests;  but  also  perhaps  it  is  explain- 
able through  the  difficulty  we  have  in  maintaining  ourselves 
in  the  high  altitude  of  pure  knowledge  content,  to  which  the 
thesis  so  far  confines  us.  We  cannot  altogether  forget  that 
knowledge  also  is  for  man  an  event  in  a  personal  history,  a 
function  of  a  temporal  succession;  and  because  reality  ap- 
parently is  in  time,  we  turn  to  an  "active"  principle,  an  "agent," 
to  change  it  from  appearance  to  reality.  In  any  case  the  unity 
of  the  empirical  self,  with  its  suggestion  of  the  particular  and 


232        English  and  American  Philosophy 

the  temporal,  does  actually  serve  for  Green  in  this  way  as  a 
mediating  term  between  the  chaos  of  mere  feelings,  and  the 
timeless  unity  of  pure  knowledge. 

But  the  remedy  will  work  only  when  we  confuse,  once  more, 
the  temporal  unity  of  the  process  of  experience  with  the  time- 
less unity  of  a  knowledge  content;  and  in  the  degree  in  which 
Green  insists  upon  the  timelessness  of  the  self  as  well,  all 
connection  with  a  temporal  world  vanishes  again.  Nothing  in 
the  argument  for  a  timeless  self  is  relevant  to  the  peculiar 
character  of  that  felt  continuity  of  experience  to  which  the 
empirical  self  is  tied;  the  reasoning  gets  its  force  entirely  from 
the  refusal  to  recognize  any  difference  between  the  logical  and 
the  existential  or  psychological  fact.  Logically  it  is  true  that  in 
the  idea  of  succession  there  is  no  temporal  separation  of  ante- 
cedent and  consequent ;  both  are  held  together  in  an  indivisible 
and  non-temporal  unity.  But  in  the  feeling  of  succession, 
which  enters  into  an  actual  human  experience,  this  is  not 
so  evidently  the  case.  Somehow  or  other,  to  be  sure,  experi- 
ence is  capable  of  being  felt  as  continuous,  and  is  not  a  string 
of  bare  disjointed  states;  this  is  a  fundamental  fact  which 
the  possibility  of  rational  experience  presupposes.  But  it  does 
not  follow  that  the  life  which  is  thus  bound  together  is  taken 
out  of  time.  On  the  contrary,  the  whole  meaning  of  the  felt 
relation  is  a  temporal  one,  and  "before'^  and  "after"  are  no 
mere  logical  distinctions,  but  actual  characters  in  the  real  world. 
For  if  the  very  fact  that  our  human  experience  is  unified, — 
the  fact,  in  short,  that  we  have  experience, — is  enough  to 
take  it  out  of  time,  it  is  impossible  to  understand  how  even  the 
illusion  of  time  could  have  arisen.  If  a  temporal  series  were 
not  unified.  Green  argues,  we  could  not  know  it  as  a  series. 
But  neither  could  we  know  it  as  a  series  if,  with  the  introduc- 
tion of  unity,  it  straightway  ceased  to  be  a  series.  I  cannot 
indeed  know  two  things  as  before  and  after,  except  as  the 
related  terms  are  both  timelessly  implicated  in  a  unity  of 
thought;  but  if  the  things  to  which  the  relations  attach  are 


T,  H,  Green  233 

not  really  in  temporal  succession,  then  my  thought  falsifies 
them. 

Green's  argument  depends,  then,  on  the  refusal  to  see  any 
distinction  between  the  experienced  unity  of  a  human  life,  and 
the  logical  unity  of  a  system  of  thought, — a  unity  indeed  out 
of  time,  but  out  of  time  because  it  is  logical,  and  not  because 
it  is  unified.  Everywhere  he  presupposes  that  unless  we  fall 
back  on  the  timeless  unity  of  logical  content,  we  are  forced  to 
the  alternative  of  a  meaningless  chaos  of  unrelated  feelings. 
But  it  is  not  evident  why  there  may  not  be,  as  there  appears 
to  be,  a  more  immediate  experience  of  unity  which  is  not  time- 
less, but  itself  identical  with  a  portion  of  the  time  process. 
Indeed  we  might  seem  bound  to  presuppose  some  immediate  ex- 
perience of  time  before  the  thought  of  time  could  have  any 
content.  And  it  is  in  harmony  with  all  our  mental  prepos- 
sessions to  regard  the  unity  of  the  empirical  self  as  such  a 
temporal  fact,  felt  as  stretching  out  over  an  actual  temporal 
span,  and  having,  as  a  whole,  its  beginning  and  its  ending. 
And  Green's  argument  seems  always  to  miss  this  possibility. 
The  content  of  a  consciousness  of  a  sensible  event,  he  urges, 
is  not  itself  a  sensible  event.  Now  the  logical  content  in  terms 
of  which  we  know  a  past  sensible  event  is  not  indeed  a  sensi- 
ble event;  and  also  the  immediate  experience  of  a  sensible  event 
is  not  a  "mere"  unrelated  feeling.  But  surely  there  is  some 
interpretation  in  which  everyone  would  acknowledge  that  it  is 
an  "event,"  and  an  event  that  cannot  be  disconnected  from 
sensation.  Even  an  act  of  knowledge  comes  into  being  and 
passes  away  again;  and  no  appeal  to  the  abstract  descriptive 
content  which  it  makes  use  of  for  the  purposes  of  knowing  can 
alter  this.  What  Green  is  really  doing  here  in  order  to  get  a 
timeless  self,  is  to  hypostasize  consciousness,  and  then  to  argue 
that  between  this  consciousness  of  succession  and  its  elements 
there  can  be  no  temporal  relationship,  since  it  is  present  to  all 
of  them  alike.  But  the  experience  of  succession  is  not  an 
hypostasized  spiritual  principle,  but  simply  what  it  claims  to 


234       English  and  American  Philosophy 

be — time-revealing  experience;  and  with  reference  to  its  com- 
ponents it  does  not  need  to  have  a  temporal  relation,  because 
it  is  their  temporal  relationship.  And  it  still  remains  tem- 
porally related  also  to  a  wider  context.  This  wider  relation 
can  indeed  only  be  apprehended  by  us  through  the  medium  of 
a  timeless  knowledge  content ;  but  this  takes  it  out  of  time  only 
in  case,  once  more,  we  beg  the  question  at  the  start,  and  identify 
reality  with  the  abstract  content  in  terms  of  which  it  is  known. 

10.  Now  if  we  feel  ourselves  constrained  to  accept  at  all  the 
notion  of  a  self  which  is  neither  God,  nor  a  chaos  of  unrelated 
feelings,  but  which,  existing  in  time  as  a  particular  portion  of 
reality  whose  acts  of  knowing  are  in  every  case  particular 
events,  is  yet  really  competent  to  pass,  through  knowledge,  be- 
yond its  limited  existence,  and  to  grasp  the  ideal  content  of  a 
larger  world,  it  brings  back  inevitably  the  problems  that  Ideal- 
ism congratulates  itself  on  avoiding.  If  reality  itself  is  noth- 
ing but  a  descriptive  content  which  constitutes  a  rational  or 
logical  system,  a  human  self,  and  the  fact  that  it  perceives  or 
knows,  will  of  course  enter  into  this  descriptive  system  qnly 
in  the  way  that  anything  else  may  do.  But  if  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  "existence,"  which  logic  does  not  fully  compass,  the 
matter  is  more  complicated.  In  that  case  we  have  not  merely 
to  place  the  thought  of  a  human  self  in  the  thought  of  the 
wider  context  of  the  universe;  we  have  to  relate  the  same  sys- 
tem twice  over  in  different  forms,  once  as  the  actual  universe 
in  its  known  character,  and  once  as  the  thought  of  an  insignifi- 
cant human  person  occupying  a  particular  place  in  time.  And 
then  knowledge,  in  its  human  sense,  ceases  to  be  the  object, 
and  becomes  again  a  knowledge  oj  the  object,  separated  from 
it  in  point  of  existential  being. 

Green  has  in  general  three  ways  of  dealing  with  this  situa- 
tion, which  is  the  crux  of  his  peculiar  philosophical  point  of 
view.  Most  frequently,  he  simply  ignores  the  human  aspect, 
and  concerns  himself  solely  with  knowledge  as  logical  content, 
without  asking  what  its  being  known  by  us  implies.    This  atti- 


T.  H.  Green  235 

tude  he  backs  up  on  occasion  by  specific  arguments  to  show 
why  there  can  be  no  further  question,  and  why  the  supposed 
distinction  between  thought  and  reahty,  knowledge  and  thing 
known,  self  and  object,  is  logically  meaningless.  And,  finally, 
he  proceeds  to  admit  the  essential  fact  in  dispute,  while  covering 
up  nevertheless  the  extent  of  his  admission  so  that  he  is  able 
to  persuade  himself  that  it  has  not  been  made. 

II.  Greenes  reason  for  holding  that  the  distinction  between 
thought  and  reality  is  untenable  is  roughly  this:  To  talk  of 
anything  as  outside  human  experience  is  ipso  facto  to  bring  it 
within  human  experience,  and  confess  that  it  is  not  external  and  v/ 
independent  after  all;  things-in- themselves  are  in  the  nature 
of  the  case  unknown  and  unknowable,  and  so  entirely  without 
meaning  to  us.  The  very  use  of  the  term  "external"  defeats 
our  purpose.  We  are  not  entitled  to  say  that  anything  is  out- 
side of  consciousness,  for  externality,  as  a  relation,  exists  only 
in  the  medium  of  consciousness;  it  is  one  of  the  relations  by 
which  consciousness  connects  its  objects,  and  so  cannot  relate 
consciousness  with  its  objects.  To  say,  again,  that  an  outside 
world  "acts"  upon  our  minds,  is  the  same  as  saying  that  a 
world  which  exists  only  by  the  activity  of  our  minds  is  the 
cause  of  that  activity.  Similarly  on  the  side  of  the  self;  it  can- 
not be,  as  the  dualist  implies,  the  empirical  self  which  is  the 
subject  in  knowledge,  because  the  empirical  self  is  knowable, 
and  so  is  an  "object"  which  itself  implies  a  more  ultimate  sub- 
ject. The  true  distinction  between  the  consciousness  of  the 
finite  individual,  and  what  really  exists,  is  not  that  between 
consciousness  and  its  opposite,  but  between  a  more  and  a  less 
complete  consciousness.  And  to  this  logical  argument  there 
may  be  added  a  more  practical  sort  of  consideration.  Is  it 
not  so  that  growth  in  wisdom  consists  in  the  discovery  that 
man  lives  not  in  an  alien  universe,  but  in  one  that  lends  itself 
to  appropriation  by  him  for  his  own  enlargement,  and  that 
the  revelation  of  the  true  significance  of  the  individual  in- 
volves, therefore,  the  continual  transcendence  of  his  private 


236       English  and  American  Philosophy 

personality?  And  this  offers  another  way  in  which  to  put  the 
absurdity  of  realism;  if  it  is  urged  that  knowledge  is  always 
the  property  of  some  private  individual,  the  answer  is  that  such 
an  isolated  individual  is  itself  a  pure  fiction. 

All  these  considerations  without  exception  get  their  force 
only  when  the  question  in  dispute  is  prejudged.  They  can  be 
given  a  perfectly  good  meaning  //  what  we  are  talking  about 
is  the  ideal  content  which  descriptively  we  apply  to  reality, 
abstracted  from  the  occurrence  of  knowing  as  an  incident  in  a 
finite  life;  but  they  lose  their  controversial  force  the  moment 
it  is  admitted  as  conceivable  that  the  ideal  content  of  human 
knowledge,  and  reality,  may  be  distinguished.  "External"  is 
indeed  perhaps  not  the  best  word  to  describe  the  relationship 
intended;  it  suggests  too  strongly  a  spatial  character.  All 
that  is  meant,  however,  is  that  objects  may  have  a  sort  of  ex- 
istence, not  unrelated  to,  but  nevertheless  quite  distinguish- 
able from,  the  psychical  event — and  all  our  thoughts  are 
psychical  events  whatever  else  they  may  be — in  which  we 
apprehend  their  ideal  nature;  and  this  is  not  prejudicial  in 
the  least  to  the  further  claim  that,  as  a  logical  character,  every 
predicate  that  we  can  ascribe  to  reality,  including  the  relation 
of  externality  itself,  must,  to  be  grasped  in  thought,  be  brought 
within  a  knowledge  content.  And  it  is  incompetent  to  apn 
peal  to  the  absurdity  of  a  thing-in-itself,  because  what  is 
meant  by  a  thing-in-itself  is,  not  mere  being  that  possesses 
no  specific  character, — ^which  is  what  the  idealist  commonly 
insists  that  it  must  mean, — but  being  that  has  just  the  char- 
acter that  thought  assigns  to  it,  while  nevertheless  embodying 
this  character  on  a  different  plane  of  existence  from  that  which 
is  involved  in  the  act  of  human  thinking.  So  again  one  need 
not  deny  the  evident  fact  that  in  some  real  fashion  the  human 
self  is  not  isolated,  but  finds  its  life  in  connection  with  the 
world  about  it.  But  if  thought  can  bring  us  into  relation 
to  a  reality  which  exists  beyond  the  self  who  thinks  it,  this 
will  mean,  simply,  not  that  my  expanding  life  absorbs  in  a 


T.  H,  Green  237 

literal  sense  the  world  of  things  and  other  selves,  but  only  that 
it  needs  these  conscious  relationships  to  the  world,  mediated 
through  knowledge,  to  supply  its  cognitive  content  and  its 
value. 

12.  Now  since,  in  talking  of  anything  whatever,  we  neces- 
sarily put  it  in  descriptive  terms,  every  statement  alike  can 
get  an  interpretation,  without  going  beyond  the  realm  of 
logic;  and  there  seems  no  compulsion  that  can  force  a  phi- 
losopher against  his  will  to  look  further  for  its  meaning.  The 
very  objection  that  "existence"  ought  to  be  taken  account  of  as 
well  as  logical  content,  can  be  turned  if  we  insist  that  existence, 
too,  is  only  a  category  of  thought,  and  has  no  sense,  therefore, 
other  than  is  given  by  its  place  within  a  logical  system.  Per- 
haps only  when  we  cease  to  be  thinkers,  and  turn  to  life  itself, 
does  the  pallid  emptiness  of  a  universe  reduced  to  logical  rela- 
tions come  fully  home  to  us.  But  as  a  matter  of  theory,  also. 
Green  is  constantly  running  up  against  certain  aspects  of  the 
world  very  hard  to  reconcile  with  a  thoroughgoing  identity  of 
thought  and  reality ;  and  at  the  risk  of  repetition,  these  deserve 
some  further  attention. 

Since  knowledge  is  bound  to  mean  our  knowledge  to  begin 
with,  and  since  there  are  reasons  why  the  idealist  wishes  to 
postpone  questions  about  the  nature  of  the  "knower,"  it  will 
not  be  surprising  if  he  often  gives  the  impression  that  the 
thought  on  which  objects  are  dependent,  the  thought  which 
makes  the  world,  is  our  finite  human  thought.  Numerous  pas- 
sages might  be  quoted  in  which  this  seems  to  be  said  in  so 
many  words.  But  such  a  claim  would  of  course  misinterpret 
Greenes  real  opinion;  there  are  certain  points  about  knowledge 
which,  he  clearly  recognizes,  negative  such  an  interpretation. 
Although  he  has  found  it  easy  to  discredit  the  "external"  re- 
lation of  thought  to  its  object,  there  is  another  aspect  of 
thought  which  no  sober  philosopher  can  possibly  overlook, 
and  that  is  the  incompleteness  of  whatever  knowledge  human 
beings  anywhere  posssess.     Green  has  no  intention  of  main- 


238       English  and  American  Philosophy 

taining  the  identity  between  this  incomplete  thought  and 
reality;  indeed  in  his  ethics,  in  particular,  he  lays  a  good 
deal  of  stress  upon  the  feebleness  of  our  understanding  at  its 
best,  and  our  necessary  ignorance  of  reality  in  anything  like 
its  fulness.  Accordingly  the  explanation  keeps  recurring  that 
it  is  not  finite  thought  that  makes  the  world;  the  thought  that 

^  constitutes  objects  is  an  eternally  complete  thought,  which  yet 
by  its  presence  as  a  spiritual  principle  in  us  renders  our  in- 
complete knowledge  possible. 

One  sense  that  might  attach  to  this  has  already  been  dis- 
counted. The  claim  that  our  thought  truly  knows  the  real 
world  would  be  disallowed,  were  it  not  so  that  the  characters 
which  it  attributes  to  the  world  are  the  very  same  characters 
that  really  belong  there.  What  however  the  dispute  turns  on 
is  the  further  question  whether  this  identity  of  abstract  logical 
content  is  enough  to  constitute  an  identity  of  the  two  selves,  or 
the  two  systems,  as  concrete  facts  of  existence.  If  reality  is 
nothing  but  logical  content,  it  has  been  seen  that  the  answer 
is  inevitable.  A  logical  fact  is  identical  with  itself  wherever 
it  may  be  found;  and  accordingly  in  so  far  as  my  thought 
reproduces  the  divine  consciousness,  it  is  the  divine  conscious- 
ness. 

But  now  if  the  self  in  the  two  cases  is  identically  the  same 

t  self,  why  should  there  be,  or  appear  to  be,  two  systems,  one  in- 
complete, the  other  perfect?  Either  they  are  literally  one,  and 
then  no  question  of  duality  ever  could  have  arisen;  or  else,  if 
the  self  that  is  present  in  both  of  them  is  one,  but  the  systems 
themselves  are  capable  of  being  distinguished,  the  difference 
must  be  due  to  some  outstanding  feature  alien  to  the  one 
spiritual  principle.  Green  evades  the  difficulty  by  an  appeal  to 
our  ignorance.  He  would  have  us  refrain  from  asking  why 
a  perfect  consciousness  should  thus  go  on  to  make  innumerable 
imperfect  copies  of  itself;  we  are,  he  says,  not  called  upon  to 
explain  why  reality  is  what  it  is.  It  might  perhaps  be  thought 
that  a  philosophy  whose  whole  aim  is  to  substitute  rational  sig- 


T.  H,  Green  239 

nificance  for  bare  fact,  is  under  an  obligation  to  suggest  some 
meaning  for  a  central  aspect  of  its  world,  so  apparently  with- 
out point;  but  at  any  rate  this  is  scarcely  the  issue.  It  is  a 
question  primarily  not  of  fact,  but  of  logical  consistency.  And 
Green  finds  it  impossible  to  express  himself  without  implying 
constantly  the  dualism  he  is  logically  bound  to  avoid.  Thus 
when  he  speaks  for  example  of  the  source  of  the  external  re- 
lations, and  the  source  of  our  knowledge  of  them,  as  one  and 
the  same,  the  distinction  which  he  excludes  from  the  "source" 
breaVs  out  again  at  once  in  connection  with  its  effects,  and 
"our"  knowledge  separates  from  the  system  known.  The 
character,  then,  which  most  indubitably  attaches  to  human 
knowledge — its  finiteness  and  incompleteness — opens  up  a 
gap  between  thought  and  reality  that  cannot  be  bridged  by 
the  mere  assertion  that  they  have  a  certain  measure — but  only 
a  measure — of  logical  identity.  Green  accepts  the  finite  at  its 
face  value  as  a  "partial  phase  of  the  whole  viewed  in  its  isola- 
tion"; it  does  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to  him  to  ask  the 
question.  Viewed  by  whom,  or  what?  For  while  a  part  may 
be  a  part,  it  needs  some  ingenuity  to  explain  how  it  can  get 
"viewed"  in  an  isolation  which,  if  the  sole  real  point  of  view' 
is  that  of  the  eternal  self,  has  been  shown  to  be  a  term  without 
meaning. 

13.  A  closely  related  difficulty  has  to  do  with  the  temporal 
character  of  finite  human  experience,  including  the  experience 
of  knowing.  It  has  appeared  that  the  moment  an  object  be- 
comes intelligible,  it  is  taken  out  of  time,  and  that  the  real  self 
which  does  the  knowing  is  also  timeless;  how  then  does  the  ap- 
pearance of  time  arise?  If  the  knowing  self  were  different  from 
the  eternal  self,  one  might  perhaps  be  eternal,  and  the  other 
temporal ;  but  how  can  the  same  self  be  at  once  eternally  time- 
less, and  a  development  in  time?  And  yet,  by  an  unavoidable 
prejudice  of  our  minds,  the  empirical  self  does  seem  to  be  a 
temporal  fact;  and  if  our  incomplete  knowledge  is  the  reproduc- 
tion of  a  timeless  reality,  at  least  it  is  a  progressive  reproduc- 


240        English  and  American  Philosophy 

tion.  Green  is  so  intent  on  saving  the  timelessness  of  knowl- 
edge, that  he  tends  to  lose  sight  of  the  main  difficulty  here. 
What,  he  asks,  does  the  fact  that  we  pass  through  a  succession 
of  mental  states  of  consciousness  mean?  Not  that  knowledge 
is  an  event.  The  only  event  is  the  mental  event  of  arriving 
at  an  apprehension  of  the  related  facts;  and  the  event  of  pass- 
ing into  a  state  of  consciousness  is  not  that  which  makes  it 
what  it  is  (W  a  state  of  consciousness.  This  last  is,  once  more, 
the  presence  of  a  spiritual  principle  through  which  relations  are 
brought  together  into  a  unity  that  excludes  succession.  But 
such  a  method  of  showing  that  knowledge  is  timeless  depends, 
not  on  getting  rid  of  time,  but  on  locating  it  elsewhere  in  the 
J  event  of  arriving  at  knowledge.  And  how  the  timeless  whole 
is  capable  of  taking  up  a  finite  self  whose  partial  character  is 
only  explainable  through  the  conception  of  events  in  time,  still 
remains  unanswered. 

14.  It  is  in  connection  with  one  further  aspect  of  the  situ- 
ation that  Greenes  conclusions  about  the  finite  and  the  temporal 
seem  at  times  on  the  point  of  crystallizing.  It  has  appeared 
that  his  argument  starts  out  from  an  attack  on  English  sensa- 
tionalism, in  the  interest  of  relations.  Now  there  is  no  ap- 
parent need  why  an  analysis  of  experience  should  not  recognize 
the  presence  both  of  sensations  and  of  relations  between  them; 
but  in  Green's  case  there  are  various  motives  not  favorable  to 
this.  If  we  are  right  in  supposing  that  the  central  element  in 
his  notion  of  reality  is  that  logical  framework  into  which,  for 
human  knowledge,  the  world  ideally  falls,  then  sensation  in 
so  far  is  not  a  logical  fact.  It  is  an  existence,  concrete,  par- 
ticular, localized  in  time.  A  relation  it  is  easy  and  natural  to 
think  of  as  a  universal  and  timeless  fact;  but  not  so  a  sensa- 
tion. From  another  angle,  too,  it  is  hard  for  our  everyday 
thought  to  get  away  from  the  belief  that  sensation  implies  an 
outside  source  or  occasion.  Thus  even  Kant  had  tended  to 
think  of  experience  as  compounded  of  two  elements,  sensation 
and  thought,  the  one  of  which  has  its  origin  from  without,  and 


T.  H,  Green  241 

the  other  from  the  mind  itself;  it  is  this  feature  of  Kant  which 
Green  and  all  his  school  are  most  anxious  to  correct.  But 
then  what  is  the  place  of  sensation,  or  feeling,  in  the  rela- 
tional whole? 

The  easiest  reply  would  be,  logically,  that  sensation  has  no 
existence  at  all  as  distinct  from  relations;  and  there  is  ground  ^ 
for  thinking  that  this  is  what  Green  in  certain  moods  would 
like  very  much  to  be  able  to  say.  He  does  not  say  it  quite 
unambiguously;  and  at  times  he  says  the  opposite.  Green 
is  well  aware  of  the  barrenness,  for  religion  and  ethics  at  any 
rate,  of  an  eternal  self  which  has  no  place,  along  with  thought, 
for  will  and  feeling;  and  he  makes  this  an  objection  against 
Caird's  version  of  idealism.  He  even  talks  of  feeling  and 
thought  as  inseparable  and  mutually  dependent,  each  in  its 
full  reality  including  the  other.^  But  the  more  specific  his 
arguments  become,  the  more  they  make  it  evident  that  his  real 
metaphysical  interest  lies  on  one  side  of  this  thesis  only — 
that  the  reality  of  feeling  includes  relations;  and  his  method  ^ 
of  showing  this  leaves  it  uncertain  to  what  extent,  on  the  other 
hand,  relation  can  be  said  even  to  imply  feelings.  By  preemp- 
ting the  word  "reality,"  to  begin  with,  for  the  intellectual  way 
in  which  we  distinguish,  not  the  real  from  the  unreal,  but  the 
real  from  what  merely  seems  to  be, — ^by  identifying  it,  that 
is,  with  a  purely  logical  function, — he  is  able  to  show  that  only 
in  terms  of  relationships  can  this  test  be  applied;  the  question 
about  the  reality  of  anything  has  to  do  solely  with  the  ques- 
tion whether  it  is  what  it  is  taken  to  be, — that  is,  whether  it 
is  related  as  it  seems  to  be  related.^  Accordingly  the  reality  of 
feeling,  also,  has  meaning  only  through  its  reference  to  a 
permanent  order  of  nature;  and  this  unalterableness  does  not 
belong  to  simple  feelings  by  themselves,  but  to  the  relations 
which  they  have  to  their  conditions,  or  to  other  feelings.  The 
same  sort  of  consideration  applies  to  the  particularity  of  feel- 
ing; a  particular  feeling  is,  again,  a  feeling  related  in  a  certain 
^Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  Sec.  50.        *  Ibid.,  Sec.  12. 


242        English  and  American  Philosophy 

"^dcy.  Now  this  as  it  stands  might  seem  to  presuppose  that 
feelings  must  at  any  rate  j5rst  be  felt  before  they  can  be  placed 
even  in  a  mistaken  context;  but  its  logic  nevertheless  points 
to  a  conclusion  of  a  more  radical  sort.  For  if  the  sole  mean- 
ing that  attaches  to  the  reality  of  anything  is  that  it  has  a  place 
in  an  objective  order,  nothing  is  left  to  the  claim  that  the  feel- 
ing is  real  as  jelt\  and  consequently  by  itself  it  cannot  be  said 
to  be  anything  at  all,  and  the  entire  nature  which  sensations 
have  in  experience  belongs  to  them  in  virtue  of  their  relations.^ 
This  conclusion  Green  himself  seems  ready  at  times  to  draw 
more  or  less  explicitly.  When  we  say  that  the  reality  of  a 
feeling  is  in  its  relationships,  we  are  saying  that  feeling  as 
such  is  not  real;  for  a  relation  between  feelings  is  not  itself 
felt.  Or,  still  more  subtly,  let  us  grant  that  there  undoubtedly 
is  something  in  experience  other  than  thought;  feeling  is 
other  than  thought.  It  is  its  otherness  to  thought  that  makes 
feeling  what  it  is.  But  that  is  saying,  then,  that  relation  to 
thought  makes  it  what  it  is,  so  that  it  is  nothing  but  a  relation- 
ship after  all.^  The  same  sort  of  argument  has  already  been 
seen  to  apply  to  the  temporal  character  that  is  supposed  to 
give  individuality  to  feeling.  Whatever  feeling  as  such  may  be, 
the  reality  of  the  occurrence  of  feeling  is  not  feeling,  but  the 
fact  that  it  is  felt;  and  the  "fact  that"  is  a  non-temporal  and 
relational  fact,  which  does  not  itself  pass  away.  For  knowl- 
edge, then,  sensible  qualities  are  not  sensations,  but  consist 
either  in  possibilities  of  producing  sensations,  or  in  the  facts 
that  such  and  such  sensations  are  being  produced;  ^  and  there 
is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  to  their  timeless  conditions  must 
be  added  something  further  in  the  way  of  feltness,  since  for 
the  only  sort  of  consciousness  for  which  reality  exists,  the  con- 
ceived conditions  are  the  reality.*  It  may  be  conjectured  that 
the  common  notion  that  an  event  in  the  way  of  sensation  is 
something  sui  generis,  is  probably  a  mistake  of  ours  arising 

*Cf.  Works,  Vol.  I,  p.  378.  'Vol.  I,  p.  417. 

'Vol.  II,  p.  181.  *Vol.  n,  p.  191. 


T,  H,  Green  243 

from  the  fact  that  we  feel  before  we  know  what  the  reality 
of  the  feeling  is,  and  hence  continue  to  fancy  that  the  feeling 
is  something  apart  from  its  timeless  relational  conditions.^ 

15.  If  the  outcome  of  all  this  is,  as  it  seems  to  be,  that  the 
feeling  aspect  of  experience  can  be  refined  away  into  bare 
relations,  then  we  have  indeed  consistency;  but  we  also  have 
unquestionably  a  fatal  break  with  common  sense.  And  rather 
than  accept  this  break,  it  would  appear  preferable  to  suspect 
some  juggling  in  the  argument.  Is  it  not  so,  Green  supposes 
an  objector  to  urge,  that  the  conditions  of  which  we  have 
been  talking  "are  or  include  relation  to  feeling?  True;  but 
relations  to  feeling  are  not  feelings.'^ ^  True  also;  but  how 
can  we  have  a  relation  to  feeling  unless  the  feeling  also  is 
there  to  be  related?  One  is  constantly  puzzled  to  place  in 
Green's  arguments  the  "mere"  feeling  that  keeps  cropping  up; 
again  and  again  it  is  proved  that  mere  feeling  is  a  fiction,  and 
yet  we  find  the  phrase  appearing  whenever  it  is  necessary  to 
contrast  sensation  with  its  eternal  conditions,  or  knowledge 
with  its  partial  reproduction  in  connection  with  an  animal 
organism.  What  is  it  that  Green  really  intends  here  by 
feeling  or  sensation?  The  answer  to  which  he  appears  to 
incline  is  one  that  may  indeed  seem  in  a  way  to  help  his  case, — 
the  answer,  namely,  that  sensation  is  a  process  of  change  in  the 
physical  organism.^  For  since  the  organism,  as  a  physical 
object,  has  already  been  reduced  to  an  element  in  the  eternal 
consciousness,  we  might  appear  at  one  blow  to  have  thus  got 
rid  of  the  troublesome  "psychical"  fact  of  feeling  as  distinct 
from  thought,  and  of  the  claims  of  time  to  be  in  any  sense 
real,  and  so  to  have  attained  the  desired  goal  of  an  eternal 
relational  content.  But  also  in  so  doing  we  have  left  behind 
even  the  appearance  of  a  world  in  time,  and  of  a  progressive 
revelation  of  reality  to  finite  selves. 

16.  It  has  been  necessary  to  deal  at  length  with  Green's 

*  Vol.  II,  p.  190.  'Vol.  II,  p.  191. 

*VoI.   I,   p.    12;   Prolegomena,  Sec.    67. 


244       English  and  American  Philosophy 

metaphysical  presuppositions,  since,  although  the  ethical  in- 
terest supplies  the  motivating  force  of  his  philosophy,  and 
colors  always  its  results,  it  is  upon  his  ability  to  provide  for 
ethics  a  sound  metaphysical  foundation  that  he  himself  rests 
his  case.  Meanwhile  his  ethical  theory  is  also  not  free  from 
difficulties.  The  conception  of  moral  goodness  in  terms  of  an 
absolute  and  all-embracing  end,  an  ultimate  perfection  eternally 
realized,  has  two  chances  of  leading  us  astray.  On  the  one 
hand  we  might  be  tempted  to  argue  that  since  the  good  already 
is  complete,  and  I  am  what  I  am  only  because  otherwise  its 
perfection  could  not  be,  my  duty  is  fulfilled,  and  I  may  lie 
back  at  my  spiritual  ease.  To  this  outcome  Green  himself 
has  not  the  least  inclination,  though  he  is  saved  from  it  less 
by  pure  reason  than  by  his  ethical  earnestness.  What  to 
him  the  conception  means  is,  rather,  that  because  the  perfec- 
tion is  so  high,  it  should  urge  me  on  to  greater  effort.  It  is 
true  we  do  not  know  precisely  in  what  the  perfect  life  consists. 
But  the  certainty  that  such  a  vast  and  emotion-stirring  good 
is  somewhere  actual,  is  nevertheless  the  effective  agent  of 
progress;  it  renders  us  dissatisfied  with  any  existing  attain- 
ment, and  fills  us  with  a  divine  discontent  that  keeps  us 
pressing  forward. 

But  this  second  attitude  also  raises  certain  queries.  It  is 
not  only  that  a  good  which  in  its  nature  is  unattainable  by  us 
may,  if  we  look  at  it  too  closely,  lose  its  motive  power;  its 
very  perfection  renders  it  useless  as  an  actual  source  of  guid- 
ance. The  idea  of  something  absolutely  desirable  but  other 
than  any  specific  object  of  desire,  of  a  supreme  good  which  is 
no  good  thing  in  particular,  tends,  just  by  its  attempt  at  in- 
clusiveness,  to  lose  its  grip  on  reality,  and  to  pass  into  ideal- 
istic vagueness.  It  is  true  such  phrases  might  only  mean 
that  we  are  not  to  isolate  individual  ends,  and  take  what  is 
partial  as  if  we  could  stop  with  it,  and  rest  permanently  satis- 
fied. But  Green  means  something  more  than  this.  In  his 
predilection  for  a  timeless  whole,  he  feels  that  it  is  not  enough 


r.  H,  Green  245 

that  we  should  find  our  good  in  a  temporal  process  that  goes 
on  from  one  satisfaction  to  another,  each  desire  and  interest 
expressing  adequately  our  needs  at  this  particular  stage;  he  ^ 
wants  a  well-being  that  shall  consist  in  a  complete  fulfilment 
of  oneself  in  one  timeless  moment.  And  the  consequence  is 
that  not  only  is  it  impossible  to  get  any  notion  of  what  this 
can  be  like,  but  he  even  runs  the  risk  of  pointing  us  in  the 
wrong  direction.  Green's  doctrine  here  stands  for  a  real  and 
important  aspect  of  the  moral  experience.  But  if  the  injunc- 
tion to  do  one's  best,  while  still  recognizing  that  our  best  falls 
short  always  of  the  ultimate  Best,  be  interpreted,  again,  not 
as  a  warning  against  moral  stagnation  merely,  but  as  a  reason 
for  dissatisfaction  with  every  possible  stage  of  growth  because 
it  is  not  something — eternally  complete  attainment,  namely — 
which  it  cannot  possibly  be,  it  is  almost  certain  to  direct  oiu: 
eyes  away  from  concrete  values  and  ends  felt  to  be  worth  work- 
ing for  on  their  own  account, — even  though  we  recognize  in 
words  that  these  are  needed  to  give  content  to  life, — and  to 
lead  us  to  place  the  emphasis  on  characteristics  of  the  moral 
experience,  such  as  conscientiousness  and  spiritual  aspiration, 
which  bring  to  light  that  subjectivity  of  outlook  from  which 
it  is  difficult  to  free  the  notion  of  "self-realization."  And 
therewith  the  ideal  loses  its  quaHty  of  realism,  and  is  senti- 
mentalized. It  gets  out  of  touch  with  the  actual  world;  it  is 
tempted  to  look  with  disapproval  on  our  "animal"  nature, 
and  the  staple  facts  of  human  happiness;  and  it  ends  by  en- 
couraging a  man  to  busy  himself  somewhat  beyond  the  bounds 
of  safety  with  comparisons  of  his  own  character  with  the  per- 
fect standard,  with  anxious  inquiries  "whether  the  heart  is  as 
pure  as  it  should  be,"  and  with  the  cultivation  of  an  attitude 
of  "genuine  self-abasement  in  the  presence  of  an  ideal  of 
holiness."  Whether  the  notion  of  a  "better"  is  really  strength- 
ened by  this  reference  to  a  "best,"  either  metaphysically  or 
spiritually,  is  at  least  open  to  dispute. 

17.    Meanwhile,  in  any  case,  it  is  clear  that  Green's  stand- 


246       English  and  American  Philosophy 

ard  of  perfection,  even  if  it  offers  motivation,  does  not  con- 
stitute an  actual  source  of  guidance;  and  in  view  of  this  it 
gives  a  strong  logical  standing  to  a  certain  practical  attitude  to 
which  the  idealistic  movement  is  in  general  quite  definitely- 
inclined.  If  truth  is  the  revelation  of  an  eternal  self-conscious- 
ness whose  activity  lends  to  us  whatever  reality  we  possess, 
but  whose  full  nature  lies  beyond  our  reach,  wherein  consists 
that  partial  knowledge  of  God  on  which  we  have  to  rely  to 
guide  us  in  affairs  of  duty?  An  answer  is  at  hand;  since 
knowledge  is  objective,  the  revelation  of  God  is  to  be  looked 
for  in  the  past  achievements  and  institutions  and  organized 
habits  of  society.  But  in  that  case  the  authority  of  custom 
would  appear  to  be  our  only  trustworthy  guide,  leaving  it  a 
man's  highest  task  to  keep  "loyal  in  the  spirit  to  established 
morality,"  and  to  perform  ''fully  the  duties  of  his  station  in 
life."  Green's  own  ethical  instincts  are  not  wholly  favorable  to 
this  conclusion ;  in  his  Principles  of  Political  Obligation,  in  par- 
ticular, his  sincere  respect  for  human  individuality  and  freedom 
steers  him  well  away  from  the  goal  to  which  he  might  seem 
pointed.  And  it  is  true  of  course  that  in  theory  he  presup- 
poses explicitly  a  constant  progress  beyond  present  attainment 
and  present  formulas.  But  nevertheless  he  finds  it  difficult 
to  legitimize  any  rational  principle  of  guidance  for  man,  in  his 
attempt  at  progress,  that  is  not  to  be  discovered  in  the  accepted 
teachings  and  practice  of  the  past.  Progress  goes  on,  to  be 
sure;  but  it  goes  on  under  the  influence  of  hidden  forces.  It 
is  only  when  it  has  already  defined  itself  in  social  achievement 
that  we  have  any  conscious  source  of  control;  human  reason 
consists  only  in  reflecting  on  these  creations,  themselves  cre- 
ated unreflectively.  Consequently  in  so  far  as  man  can  reason 
about  his  conduct,  he  is  wholly  dependent  on  the  principles 
of  conventional  morality,  his  individual  conscience  being  but 
the  presence  of  reason  in  him  "as  informed  by  the  work  of 
reason  without  him  in  the  structure  and  controlling  sentiments 
of  society." 


T.  H.  Green  247 

There  is  an  element  of  truth  in  this,  undoubtedly.  If 
human  nature  holds  possibilities  that  have  not  yet  come  to 
light,  it  is  only  by  acting  on  faith  in  such  possibilities,  and 
not  by  a  clear  intellectual  prevision,  that  their  content  can  be 
defined.  But  the  more  we  insist  that  these  must  always  be 
embodied  in  accepted  practices  and  opinions  before  they  con- 
stitute Reason,  the  more  impossible  we  make  it  to  direct  our 
lives  through  reason  except  by  falling  in  submissively  with 
what  we  find  about  us.  Green  has  a  method  of  escaping  this 
conclusion ;  but  it  does  not  seem  easy  to  apply  it  without  going 
beyond  his  own  professed  standpoint.  We  are  to  separate, 
that  is,  the  principle  of  progress  from  specific  forms  of  life, 
and  then  use  this  principle  to  interpret  and  correct  the  con- 
flicts between  conventional  claims.  But  the  "principle"  of 
institutions  is  no  plain  historical  fact,  as  the  institutions  them- 
selves are,  but  is  intimately  dependent  on  individual  insight^ 
for  its  discovery;  and  the  objective  method  can  no  more  sur- 
vive, therefore,  the  appeal  to  principles,  than  the  authority  of 
Scripture  can  survive  the  right  of  private  judgment  in  its  in- 
terpretation. 

In  spite  therefore  of  his  firm  belief  in  progress.  Green  is 
led  logically  to  the  conclusion  that  all  forms  of  authority  are 
divine,  since  they  are  the  actualized  products  of  that  world- 
reason  which,  in  the  absence  of  personal  standards,  we  have 
no  means  of  criticizing;  just  as,  for  Newman,  Catholic  dogma 
can  never  be  an  aberration,  but  is  always  an  addition  by  way 
of  further  development.  At  least  we  are  never  justified  in 
questioning  institutional  morality  in  favor  of  our  private  good ; 
when  authorities  themselves  conflict,  the  case  is  less  simple. 
Greenes  discussion  here  is  not  very  illuminating,  nor  without  a 
touch  of  casuistry;  ^  but  the  practical  outcome  appears  to 
be  that  we  should  try  to  convince  ourselves  that  in  principle 
both  are  right,  and  so  avoid  an  attitude  of  conscientious  oppo- 
sition to  any  established  institution.  Green,  as  has  been  re- 
^ Prolegomena,  Sees.  321  ff. 


248       English  and  American  Philosophy 

marked,  when  he  comes  down  to  questions  of  practice,  has  too 
keen  a  sense  for  human  justice  to  live  up  to  this  ideal  demand ; 
but  that  only  means  that  his  instincts  he  never  quite  succeeded 
in  reconciling  with  his  theory. 

18.  In  general,  the  criticism  of  Green  in  the  preceding  pages 
has  come  to  this,  that  in  trying  to  justify  an  objective  knowl- 
edge of  man  and  nature  as  something  we  start  with,  rather 
than  deduce  from  what  is  not  knowledge — bare  feeling,  or 
nervous  changes, — he  has  been  led  to  substitute  a  logical  skele- 
ton of  relational  content  for  the  actual  flesh-and-blood  world 
of  concrete  existences,  including,  in  particular,  the  human  self 
which,  not  as  a  string  of  disjointed  feelings,  nor  as  an  active 
"principle"  identical  with  the  source  of  all  being,  but  as  a 
plain  reality  in  a  world  of  realities,  stands  over  against  the 
objects  which  it  knows.  If  the  criticism  is  justified,  it  is 
unnecessary,  since  it  applies  to  them  all  alike,  to  stop  in  detail 
upon  the  imposing  array  of  names  belonging  to  the  more  ortho- 
dox section  of  the  school  of  philosophic  Idealism  of  which 
Green's  activities  were,  among  other  influences,  the  occasion. 
Indeed  Green  is  in  a  way  less  open  to  the  criticism  than  most 
of  his  associates  and  followers,  whose  relation  to  Hegel  is 
somewhat  closer  than  his  own.  The  two  Cairds  may  be  men- 
tioned here  in  particular  as,  along  with  Green,  perhaps  the  most 
influential  protagonists  of  the  idealistic  movement.  John  Caird 
was  a  Scottish  clergyman  and  powerful  pulpit  orator,  who  in 
1873  became  Principal  of  the  University  of  Glasgow;  his 
Philosophy  of  Religion,  which  seeks  to  reconstruct  the  tradi- 
tional arguments  for  God's  existence  along  Hegelian  lines,  is 
in  some  ways  the  most  luminous  and  attractive  single  document 
that  the  school  produced.  Edward  Caird 's  reputation  rests  in 
particular  upon  his  monumental  criticism  of  Kant,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  later  German  Absolutism;  and  his  aca- 
demic teaching  is  of  special  importance  in  the  history  of  the 
movement,  and  did  a  good  deal  to  shape  its  formulas. 

In  accepting  Hegel  as  their  inspiration,  both  John  and  Ed- 


John  and  Edward  Caird  249 

ward  Caird  were  led  still  more  consistently  to  turn  aside  from 
any  problems  that  may  be  present  in  connection  with  the  ap- 
parent difference  between  the  human  and  the  absolute  self, 
so  that  even  Green  feels  this  as  a  drawback  in  their  version  of 
idealism.  Greenes  own  intention  had  not  been  to  make  the 
identification  too  complete.  Indeed,  as  has  appeared,  his 
ethics,  in  which  his  final  interest  lies,  involves  a  strong  em- 
phasis on  the  incompleteness  of  God^s  presence  in  man;  it  is 
this  which  explains  the  role  of  the  ideal  in  ethical  experience. 
And  accordingly  Green  proposes  to  rest  his  argument,  not  on 
the  logical  dialectic  of  thought,  which  he  sees  will  be  sure  to 
suggest  to  the  inexpert  the  processes  of  human  thought,  but 
on  the  structure  of  the  objective  world,  and  our  inability  to 
explain  its  imity  without  appealing  to  a  synthetic  activity 
which  we  only  know  as  exercised  by  our  own  spirit;  and  a 
definite  if  rather  sketchy  attempt  is  made  to  account  for  the 
peculiarities  of  human  thinking,  by  reference  to  the  animal 
organism  through  which  thought  is  tied  to  sensation,  and  so 
reproduced  only  piecemeal  and  imperfectly.  But  the  essen- 
tially logical  nature  of  Green's  own  interpretation  prevents  him 
from  doing  anything  like  justice  to  the  duality  which  he 
recognizes,  or  from  offering  a  satisfactory  explanation  of  its 
possibility;  and  his  notion  of  a  "spiritual  agent"  distinct  from 
the  rational  content  which  it  unifies,  though  it  has  an  apparent 
relevancy  for  ethics,  in  metaphysics  starts  more  questions  than 
it  satisfies. 

Accordingly  in  the  Cairds,  and  in  most  of  the  other  idealists. 
Green's  peculiar  emphasis  is  shifted, — though  this  does  not 
prevent  a  general  agreement  with  the  greater  portion  of  his 
argument, — and  a  more  pronounced  tendency  is  apparent  to- 
ward Hegelian  gnosticism.  Reality  is  identified  with  the 
"rational"  rather  than  with  the  "self";  and  human  reason  is 
used  freely  to  explain  the  nature  of  the  Absolute,  without  any 
urgent  need  being  felt  to  bother  with  the  finite  self,  beyond 
stopping  occasionally  to  explain  that  it  is  not  human  thinking. 


250       English  and  American  Philosophy 

but  God's  thought,  that  creates  the  world, — an  attitude  natural 
enough  if  the  empirical  self  is  defined  as  nothing  but  those 
elements  of  particularity  in  experience  which  Idealism  has 
shown  to  have  no  genuine  being.  From  this  Hegelian  stand- 
point, reality  is  to  be  conceived  as  an  organic  system  develop- 
ing toward  the  complete  and  self-conscious  expression  of  that 
which  is  from  the  first  implicit  in  it;  and  in  Edward  Caird,  in 
particular.  Green's  interest  in  the  ethical  experience  as  a 
process  of  human  self-realization  tends  to  be  supplanted  by  an 
objective  philosophy  of  the  historical  evolution  of  human 
thought  and  culture,  as  the  temporal  unfolding  of  the  life  of 
absolute  Reason  or  Spirit. 

§  3.    F.H.  Bradley 

I.  Of  the  three  representatives  of  absolute  idealism  who 
would  be  generally  recognized  as  having  had  the  greatest  in- 
fluence on  its  later  career,  the  first,  and  in  some  ways  the  most 
striking  and  original,  is  F.  H.  Bradley.  The  peculiarities  of 
Bradley's  metaphysics,  as  compared  with  Green's,  have  their 
start  in  the  fact  that  he  takes  feeling  seriously  as  a  fundamental 
aspect  of  reality.  The  idealistic  thesis  that  the  world  is  a 
rational  world  still  supplies  his  major  premise;  but  "thought" 
^is  definitely  rejected  as  a  synon5an  for  reality,  and  its  place  is 
taken  by  "experience," — a  term  involving  no  such  exclusion  of 
feeling  and  will  as  thought  naturally  suggests.  And  it  be- 
comes accordingly  no  longer  necessary  or  convenient  to  over- 
look the  close  connection  of  thought  with  human  thinking; 
thought  is  not  convertible  with  real  existence,  but  belongs 
definitely  to  the  world  of  finite  appearance.  Moreover,  in  at- 
tempting to  adjust  the  two  theses  that  reality  is  rational,  and 
yet  that  it  is  more  than  thought,  Bradley  is  led  to  accentuate 
the  element  of  agnosticism  already  present  in  Green.  Only 
while,  for  Green,  God  is  unknowable  not  because  he  is  un- 
thinkable, but  because  of  the  deficiencies  of  our  merely  finite 


F.  H.  Bradley  251 

thinking,  in  Bradley^s  case  the  failure  lies  in  the  essence  of 
thinking  itself.  Thought  sets  an  ideal  of  the  rational — as  that 
which  is  free  from  contradiction — which  we  must  accept  and 
trust  if  we  elect  to  play  the  game  of  thinking  at  all;  and  it 
tells  us  how  in  outline  its  own  demands  are  to  be  met.  But 
in  doing  this  it  also  reveals  to  us  that  we  can  reach  the  goal 
only  by  leaving  thought  as  such  behind;  the  heaven  of  the 
rational  is  to  be  attained  by  thought's  voluntary  immolation, 
and  its  resurrection  in  a  new  form  as  an  aspect  of  a  higher 
unity. 

Bradley's  conclusions  are  backed  by  a  mass  of  subtle  dia- 
lectic, aiming  to  show  the  lack  of  ultimate  intelligibility  in 
every  concept  that  the  human  mind  employs;  nevertheless  the 
general  trend  of  the  argument  is  relatively  simple.  We  have 
first  to  note  two  presuppositions  which  serve  everywhere  as  a 
touchstone  for  his  results.  These  presuppositions  are,  that  the 
only  notion  we  can  get  of  reality  is  in  the  form  of  experience, 
after  the  type  that  reveals  itself  in  immediate  feeling;  and 
that  this  experience  is  in  the  end  a  single  experience,  the  reality 
which  transcends  the  present  state  of  feeling  joining  on  con- 
tinuously to  its  edges,  and  forming  with  it  an  immediate  feel- 
ing whole.  Bradley  gives  of  course  reasons  to  justify  this 
faith;  it  comes  to  him  very  easily,  however,  and  the  heavy  bat- 
teries of  scepticism  which  prove  so  fatal  to  other  philosophic 
convictions  are  only  half-heartedly  brought  to  bear  upon  it. 
Assuming,  then,  that  reality  is  a  unitary  and  self-consistent 
whole  of  experience,  the  task  before  us  is  to  discover  what  can 
be  said,  if  anything,  about  its  more  specific  nature. 

2.  To  determine  to  what  extent  thought  can  grasp  reality, 
it  is  necessary  first  to  examine  the  nature  of  the  thinking 
process.  English  empiricists  had  gone  on  the  assumption  that 
an  "idea"  is  nothing  but  a  particular  psychic  existent,  occupy- 
ing a  definite  place  in  a  series  of  conscious  sensations  and 
images;  and  the  assumption  had  got  them  into  numerous  diffi- 
culties.   Bradley  recognizes  that,  as  a  cognitive  term,  an  idea 


252       English  and  American  Philosophy 

is  not  a  particular  fact,  but  a  universal.  In  thought,  as  he  is 
accustomed  to  put  it,  content  or  meaning  breaks  loose  from 
existence,  the  "what"  separates  from  the  "that,"  the  idea  from 
the  image.  There  is  indeed  always  a  psychical  image  with 
which  the  meaning  that  constitutes  the  idea  is  somehow  con- 
nected. But  thinking  has  to  do  only  with  the  ideal  content 
of  this  image;  and  not  with  the  whole  content  even,  but  some- 
times with  a  very  minor  part  of  it.  The  empiricists  had  found 
difficulty  in  admitting  the  existence  of  universals  because, 
recognizing  nothing  but  images,  they  saw  that  every  image 
must  be  a  particular  fact,  with  a  definite,  even  though  vague 
and  fluctuating,  character;  and  accordingly  the  notion  of  some- 
thing that  is  not,  say,  any  particular  kind  of  triangle,  but  just 
triangle  in  general,  becomes  hard  to  understand.  The  difficulty 
disappears  when  we  note  that  the  essence  of  a  universal  con- 
sists, not  in  existence,  but  in  meaning,  or  reference,  or  use. 
What  the  idea  intends  is  not  the  image  in  my  mind;  only 
the  abstract  character  of  the  image,  or  the  part  of  it  relevant 
to  our  intellectual  purpose,  enters  into  the  distinctively  cog- 
nitive fact. 

Now  the  essence  of  judgment  is,  that  in  judging,  such  an 
ideal  content,  divorced  from  existence,  is  referred  to  reality. 
The  favorite  thesis  that  judgment  is  a  relation  between  ideas 
misses  this  entirely.  We  do  not  judge  about  our  ideas,  but 
about  the  real;  and  this  real  is  something  that  lies  beyond 
the  judging  act,  in  the  sense  that  it  is  not  a  part  of  its  ideal 
content.  The  true  subject  of  the  judgment  is,  accordingly, 
not  the  nominal  subject,  which,  equally  with  the  predicate,  can 
be  expressed  only  in  terms  that  are  universals;  subject  and 
predicate  together  form  a  single  idea,  and  this  idea  as  a  whole 
is  taken  as  qualifying  the  real  universe.  What  is  asserted 
in  the  judgment  is  that  subject  and  predicate  are  bound  to- 
gether by  a  thread  of  identity  which  runs  through  their  differ- 
ences, and  that  this  content,  significant  only  because  of  the 
fact  that  the  identity  is  not  bare  sameness,  is  assigned  to  a 


F,  H.  Bradley  253 

background  of  reality,  revealed  not  in  the  ideal  aspect  of 
"meaning,"  but  in  the  "existence"  side  from  which,  in  thought, 
meaning  has  been  divorced — in  feeling  or  perception.  In  im- 
mediate feeling-experience,  and  here  alone,  we  come  into  direct 
contact  with  the  real;  apart  from  this,  thought  is  a  network 
of  empty  abstractions.  Feeling  is  the  aperture  through  which 
we  get  a  glimpse  of  the  real  world.  And  in  this  point  of  contact 
all  reality  is  implicitly  contained.  For  feeling  is  not  a  mere 
blank.  It  holds  within  itself  felt  differences,  though  these  are 
as  yet  below  the  surface  of  conscious  recognition;  if  it  were  not 
for  this,  thought  distinctions  never  could  be  made  explicit. 
And  in  this  way  it  furnishes  a  type  of  the  reality  at  which 
thinking  aims — a  unity  in  difference  coming  home  directly  and 
unquestionably  to  immediate  apprehension. 

But  in  this  immediate  form  it  fails  after  all  to  approve  itself 
as  fully  real,  because  of  its  lack  of  permanence  and  self-com- 
pleteness. Feeling  is  constantly  shifting,  tending  to  enlarge  its 
boundaries  and  to  pass  into  something  else;  while  reality  must 
of  necessity  be  self-existent,  substantial,  individual.  The  pur- 
pose of  thought  is  to  mediate  this  self-transcendence,  and  to 
bring  back  in  a  more  satisfying  form  the  unity  which  is  con- 
stantly breaking  up.  For  this  it  makes  use  of  the  idea.  The 
idea  must  have  its  roots  in  feeling,  otherwise  it  would  be  a 
pure  fiction;  but  it  points  beyond  the  immediate  existence  from 
which  it  springs,  in  the  effort  to  extend  this  and  supply  its 
deficiencies.  Experience  thus  everywhere  shows  broken  edges 
which  thought  is  trying  constantly  to  mend  by  piecing  on 
more  and  more  of  reality, — a  reality  always  continuous,  how- 
ever, with  the  same  real  world  from  which,  in  feeling,  we 
start. 

3.  At  this  point  certain  important  consequences  api>ear 
which  it  is  the  business  of  Appearance  and  Reality^  Bradley ^s 
most  ambitious  book,  to  set  forth.  Notwithstanding  the  fact 
that  thought  has  no  meaning  except  in  terms  of  reality,  thought 
as  such  is  not  real,  but  ideal ;  and  the  world  which  it  constructs 


254       English  and  American  Philosophy 

lacks  the  essential  note  of  existence.  It  aims  at  reality;  but 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  it  can  never  reach  its  goal  without 
itself  suffering  change.  Thought  works  by  way  of  relations; 
and  relational  thinking  is  always  in  the  end  self-contradictory. 
No  judgment  can  be  wholly  true,  unless  it  sums  up  all  the 
conditions  on  which  its  truth  depends;  otherwise  its  opposite 
may  be  asserted  also,  and  contradiction  results.  Thus  the  judg- 
ment "political  liberty  is  a  good,"  is  only  true  when  carefully 
qualified;  and  in  the  absence  of  these  explicit  qualifications  it 
may  be  equally  true  to  say  that  liberty  is  an  evil.  Human 
thinking,  however,  can  in  the  nature  of  things  never  be  thus 
self -complete.  Discursive  thought  proceeds  by  way  of  analysis 
and  synthesis.  But  in  analyzing,  I  never  by  any  chance  can 
exhaust  the  background  from  which  the  act  of  analysis  sets 
out ;  and  I  have  no  right  to  take  a  part  as  if  it  were  the  whole, 
and  assume  that  what  is  left  out  would  make  no  difference. 
The  part  certainly  does  not  exist  by  itself;  and  we  have  no 
means  of  knowing  that,  if  taken  by  itself,  it  could  still  qualify 
the  sensible  reality  from  which  we  have  extracted  it.  This 
sensible  phenomenon  is  what  it  is,  and  is  all  that  it  is;  and 
anything  less  than  itself  must  surely  be  something  else.  So 
also  of  the  synthesis  by  which  we  endeavor  to  extend  and  com- 
plete the  immediately  given.  The  whole  process  here  is  me- 
chanical, and  incapable  of  restoring  a  genuine  unity;  by  mere 
successive  acts  of  addition  we  can  never  get  an  organic  whole, 
but  are  led  on  continually  with  no  assignable  limit. 

And  not  only  do  we  find  this  so  as  a  matter  of  fact,  but 
there  is  a  necessary  inadequacy  in  the  nature  of  relations 
which  makes  them  incompetent  to  perform  the  task  demanded, 
and  leaves  us  with  a  mere  conjunction  that  has  nothing  in  it 
to  satisfy  the  need  for  rational  understanding.  The  difficulty 
appears  in  its  simplest  terms  if  we  examine  the  ultimate  con- 
nection between  relations  and  the  qualities  they  relate.  Both 
of  these  are  presupposed  in  the  content  of  thought,  and  it  is 
impossible  to  merge  either  of  them  in  the  other;  how  are  we 


F.  H.  Bradley  255 

to  construe  this  situation  rationally?  Do  relations  really 
qualify  their  terms,  or  do  they  only  stand  between  them  ex- 
ternally? If  they  are  independent  of  the  terms,  if  relations  are 
facts  that  exist  between  facts,  then  what  comes  between  the 
terms  and  the  relations  themselves?  Either  the  relation  is 
nothing  to  the  qualities,  in  which  case  they  are  not  related 
at  all,  and  have  ceased  to  be  qualities  even,  since  there  are  no 
specific  qualities  where  there  are  no  differences;  or  else  we 
have  to  find  a  new  relation  to  bring  quality  and  relation  to- 
gether, and  are  committed  to  an  infinite  process.  On  the  other 
hand  if  we  take  the  relations  as  actually  qualifying  the  terms, 
we  are  no  better  off.  Since  the  qualities  must  be,  and  must 
also  be  related,  there  is  now  a  diversity  that  falls  inside  each 
quality.  It  has  a  double  character,  as  both  supporting  and  be- 
ing made  by  the  relation;  and  these  different  aspects  are  not 
each  the  other.  But  without  the  use  of  a  relation  it  is  im- 
possible to  predicate  this  variety  of  the  quality;  and  with  an 
internal  relation  its  unity  disappears,  and  its  contents  are  dis- 
sipated in  an  endless  process  of  distinction.^  Reason  will  never 
be  satisfied  until,  for  this  wholly  unintelligible  situation,  we 
have  substituted  a  unity  which  is  a  source  of  genuine  rational 
insight,  such  that  at  every  point  the  whole  of  reality  is  lumi- 
nously present,  and  each  single  element  has  the  power  to  de- 
velop out  of  itself  the  totality,  instead  of  our  being  compelled 
to  find  the  unity  in  the  form  of  a  brute  fact  of  conjunction. 
And  for  this,  relations  must  cease  to  be  adjectives  of  their 
terms,  and  both  alike  must  become  adjectives  of  a  more  ulti- 
mate real  wherein  the  separation  of  terms  and  relations  has 
disappeared. 

It  follows  then  that  thought,  so  long  as  we  choose  to 
think  at  all,  can  never  abandon  the  effort  to  escape  self-con- 
tradiction, and  reduce  the  world  to  a  rational  and  transparent 
whole;  but  also  it  cannot  possibly,  while  it  continues  to  be 
thought,  and  to  move  in  the  realm  of  relations,  reach  the  end 

^Appearance  and  Reality,  Bk.  I,  Chap.  3. 


2S6       English  and  American  Philosophy 

at  which  it  aims.  The  quest  however  is  not  unintelligible, 
because  we  have  in  the  felt  unity  from  which  we  start  the  type 
of  what  we  seek.  And  by  conceiving  vaguely  of  a  whole  of 
immediate  experience  which  no  longer  seeks  to  pass  beyond 
itself, — ^because  it  now  includes  all  reality, — and  in  which  the 
relations  which  thought  has  uncovered, — all  of  which  must 
contain  their  degree  of  reality, — are  taken  up  into  a  higher  and 
supra-relational  form,  more  adequate  than  the  sub-relational 
form  of  feeling,  we  have  a  standard  by  which,  though  con- 
cretely it  remains  inaccessible,  we  nevertheless  can  measure 
the  relative  truth  of  the  various  thought  categories.  For  in 
thus  reducing  all  that  is  real  for  our  knowledge  to  appearance, 
we  are  not  to  be  understood  as  turning  it  into  mere  illusion. 
Every  distinction  whatsoever  is  real  in  its  degree,  and  has  its 
place  in  the  absolute  whole;  and  while  it  must  also  suffer 
change  as  a  member  of  this  whole,  the  less  of  contradiction  it 
contains,  the  less  change  it  will  need  to  undergo.  Thought, 
therefore,  can  at  least  arrange  appearances  in  the  degree  in 
which  they  participate  in  reality;  and  this  for  practical  pur- 
poses is  sufficient.  If  morality,  for  example,  is  unreal  in  the 
sense  that  in  the  Absolute  it  would  no  longer  exist  as  morality, 
— a  conclusion  which  our  inability  to  rationalize  the  moral  life 
completely  forces  us  to  admit, — it  yet  must  exist  there  in  some 
form;  and  it  will  continue  to  stand  indefinitely  nearer  to  reality 
than  the  immoral  or  the  unmoral. 

4.  It  will  be  unnecessary  to  stop  here  upon  the  fundamental 
assumption  of  Bradley's  idealism, — that,  in  order  to  have  the 
unity  which  knowledge  requires,  things  must  possess  the  special 
sort  of  unity  that  comes  from  being  parts  of  a  single  whole  of 
"experience," — since  the  criticism  that  would  have  to  be  made 
upon  this  has  already  been  suggested  elsewhere,  and  will  come 
up  again  in  other  connections.  It  is  enough  to  call  attention 
to  the  fact  that  Bradley's  own  doctrine  of  "appearance"  empha- 
sizes the  point  of  doubt  that  may  be  raised.  If  our  knowledge 
is  appearance  merely,  which  changes  when  it  is  approached 


F.  H.  Bradley  257 

from  the  side  of  the  Absolute,  and  if  the  Absolute  alone  is  real, 
where  is  the  limiting  principle  to  be  located  which  renders  it 
appearance,  and  sets  up  a  "finite  center'^  capable  of  seeing 
things  as  they  are  not?  Bradley  argues  the  impossibility  of 
answering  this  question,  because  to  do  so  would  imply  that  the 
finite  is  already  viewing  things  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
Absolute;  and  in  that  consummation  the  finite  must  have  been 
transmuted  and  destroyed.  But  the  point  of  the  question  is, 
how  there  could  be  anything  to  begin  with  in  possession  of 
reality  enough  to  stand  in  danger  of  destruction,  unless  one 
thing  at  least  were  left  outside  the  Absolute — the  "point  of 
view"  which  prevents  finite  knowledge  from  being  real.  If  for 
finite  thought  nothing  can  be  wholly  true,  it  is  natural  to  expect 
the  principle  to  work  in  the  other  direction  also — for  the 
Absolute  nothing  can  be  ap^arance;  and  for  whom,  then,  if 
not  for  the  Absolute? 

5.  It  will  bring  us  however  closer  to  the  more  distinctive 
aspects  of  Bradley's  metaphysics,  if  we  turn  to  two  further 
assumptions  which  also  underlie  his  argument.  These  are, 
first,  that  the  reality  which  the  judgment  implies  is  the  reality 
of  feeling,  or  of  the  immediate  perceptual  experience;  and, 
second,  that  the  goal  of  knowledge  is  to  become  identified  with 
reality,  in  such  a  way  that  the  difference  between  itself  and 
what  it  knows  is  broken  down.  Now  is  it — to  stop  briefly 
on  this  second  claim — really  the  ideal  of  knowledge  that  it 
should  endeavor  to  turn  itself  into  a  universe,  so  that  in  so 
far  as  it  falls  short  of  this  it  is  defeated  in  its  aim?  This  at 
least  is  to  misread  our  usual  view.  The  scientist  who  sets  out 
to  know  a  crystal  does  not  have  any  ambition  to  become  a 
crystal,  or  to  become  a  world  in  which  crystals  are  found. 
What  he  desires  is  to  understand  the  ideal  nature  of  something 
which  he  is  all  the  time  aware  is  other  than  his  knowledge  of 
it;  and  if  he  has  any  purpose  in  the  end  beyond  the  merely 
theoretical  curiosity  of  a  contemplative  mind,  this  at  least  is 
not  the  mystical  purpose  of  merging  the  identity  of  thought 


258        English  and  American  Philosophy 

and  existence.  It  is  a  practical  purpose;  he  wants  to  use  the 
ideal  knowledge  which  he  gets  to  advance  the  active  ends  in 
which  he  takes  an  interest.  And  for  this  it  is  even  necessary 
that  his  knowledge  should  not  become  reality.  A  human  end 
is  always  a  particular  end,  which  adjusts  itself  to  conditions 
other  than  itself;  and  for  successful  adjustment,  it  is  essential 
that  we  anticipate  the  nature  of  the  facts  to  be  taken  into 
account.  Consequently  it  is  the  apprehension  of  character, 
rather  than  identification  with  existence,  with  which  knowledge 
is  concerned;  knowledge  is  sought  in  order  to  prepare  us  for  a 
subsequent  encounter  with  existence  when  we  are  ready  to 
act.  Even  a  social  end,  where  one  might  expect  to  find,  if 
anywhere,  the  theory  of  identity  verified,  cannot  dispense  with 
a  separateness  of  thought  and  things.  A  social  end  may  to 
any  extent  you  please  see  in  other  men  the  occasion  of  its 
own  advancement,  may  identify  itself  sympathetically  with 
their  good,  and  recognize  a  common  interest.  But  there  must 
also  be  the  ever-present  realization  that  my  fellows  are  them- 
selves independent  sources  of  action  and  centers  of  feeling, 
whose  relation  to  me  involves,  not  a  merging  of  existence,  but 
simply  a  unity  of  aim  and  sympathy  mediated  by  my  ability, 
through  knowledge,  to  take  up  their  nature  ideally  into  my  own 
life;  and  if  this  existential  difference  ever  should  break  down, 
the  experience  would  at  once  cease  to  be  social,  and  become 
subjective  and  solipsistic. 

All  this  implies,  indeed,  a  sense  in  which,  as  Bradley  says, 
discursive  thought  is  only  a  subordinate  aspect  of  experience, 
and  points  toward  something  more  satisfying  and  complete. 
But  what  this  means  is,  that  thought  alternates  with  action 
and  enjoyment  as  a  stage  in  a  continuous  process  equally  real 
with  any  stage  so  long  as  it  is  going  on,  and  having  its  func- 
tion to  perform  in  making  other  and  richer  experience  possible; 
it  is  not  a  mutilated  portion  of  this  more  satisfying  experience. 
It  is  worth  remarking,  also,  that  only  when  we  lose  sight  of 
this  connection  of  thought  with  action,  can  we  suppose  our- 


F.  H.  Bradley  259 

selves  able  to  rest  content  with  appearance  as  a  substitute  for 
what  really  is.  Knowledge  is  indeed  always  appearance  in  this 
sense,  that  it  grasps  the  ideal  content  of  the  world,  and  not 
its  very  stuff  and  embodiment.  But  unless  it  grasped  this 
content  truly,  of  what  use  would  it  be  for  conduct?  If  my 
purpose  is  only  speculative  or  mystical,  I  might  perhaps  be 
satisfied  to  recognize  that  in  the  Absolute  my  truth  is  trans- 
formed out  of  semblance  to  its  apparent  character,  provided  I 
had  reason  to  suppose  myself  moving  in  the  right  direction. 
But  if  I  am  concerned  to  attain  personal  and  practical  ends — 
which  include  my  very  existence  even — under  circumstances 
where  my  success  is  dependent  on  reading  aright  the  nature  of 
the  forces  with  which  I  am  engaged,  and  where  the  slightest 
deviation  may  mean  disaster,  nothing  short  of  a  confidence  that 
knowledge  gives  the  actual  essence  of  reality  can  serve  me. 

6.  Now  if  one  finds  himself  able  to  adopt  this  account  of 
knowledge  as  the  attempt,  on  the  part  of  a  being  with  specific 
ends  of  his  own,  to  read  into  ideal  terms  the  true  nature  of 
the  world  about  him  for  the  sake  of  furthering  such  ends,  it 
perhaps  will  help  make  clearer  the  point  next  to  be  raised  in 
connection  with  Bradley's  theory  of  judgment.  For  Bradley, 
the  reality  which  constitutes  the  real  subject  of  the  judgment 
is  presented  to  us  in  the  feeling  fact  itself,  the  perceptual  ex- 
perience as  an  experience;  and  the  business  of  thought  is  to 
enlarge  the  borders  of  this  immediately  given  bit  of  the  exist- 
ing world  by  detaching  ideal  content  from  it,  and  using  this  in 
the  effort  to  bring  back  unity  in  a  more  adequate  form.  This 
however  is  not  the  natural  interpretation.  Grant  that  in 
knowledge  the  idea  is  not  the  psychical  image,  but  an  ideal  con- 
tent, and  grant  also  that  in  judgment  this  content  is  always 
referred  to  the  real  world;  just  what  is  the  reality  which  it 
intends  to  characterize?  Surely,  for  the  man  engaged  in 
pushing  his  ends  in  the  face  of  surrounding  helps  and  hin- 
drances, it  is  the  independent  reality  which  he  needs  to  know 
that  he  may  take  it  into  account,  and  not  the  feeling  experience 


26o       English  and  American  Philosophy 

which  for  the  moment  is  himself.  The  thing  which  in  knowl- 
edge I  characterize  by  objective  qualities  is  not  the  sensation 
as  a  feeling,  or  any  extension  of  it,  but  the  agent  to  which  my 
organism  has  to  adjust  itself, — an  agent  which  I  am  assured 
would  be  there  no  matter  what  happened  to  me  or  to  the 
feeling.  I  may  indeed  scrutinize  the  feeling  experience  itself, 
and  bring  to  light  its  limitations  and  its  conditions;  but  then 
I  am  engaged  on  a  different  quest  and  with  a  different  object — 
a  psychological  one. 

It  is  true  indeed  that  I  may  be  said  directly  to  meet  reality 
only  in  sense  perception,  and  that  the  universe  is  the  extension 
of  this  point  of  immediate  contact.  But  it  is  true  in  two 
different  senses,  which  cannot  safely  be  confused.  The  first 
meaning  is,  that  my  conscious  experience,  with  its  sensational 
content,  is  itself  a  portion  of  reality, — the  only  reality  I  am 
ever  literally  identified  with.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  also  true 
that  only  in  connection  with  sensation  is  there  revealed  to  me 
the  presence  of  anything  beyond  this  field  of  conscious  experi- 
encings.  And  if  we  fail  to  distinguish  this  second  claim  from 
the  first,  we  shall  probably  be  led  to  regard  the  world  of  known 
reality  which  sensation  mediates  or  reveals,  as  experientially 
continuous  with  the  immediate  reality  of  the  sensation  itself, 
since  no  form  of  contact  with  reality  other  than  immediate 
identity  has  been  recognized.  But  if  we  do  allow  a  valid  dis- 
tinction here,  the  conclusion  no  longer  holds.  The  feeling  is 
indeed  a  reality  necessary  somehow  to  carry  the  ideal  content 
which  the  knowledge  function  uses.  And  it  is  a  reality  which, 
when  later  it  comes  in  turn  to  be  recognized,  philosophy  is 
bound  to  find  a  place  for  in  the  universe;  this  is  indeed  just 
the  starting  point  of  the  complications  which  idealism  has  been 
found  trying  to  evade.  But  it  is  not  the  reality  w^hich  per- 
ceptual knowledge  is  professing  to  characterize.  For  knowl- 
edge, the  point  of  contact  with  the  real  world  is  not  feeling, 
but  the  active  forces,  external  to  the  organism,  with  which  in 
feeling  we  find  ourselves  in  contact. 


F.  H.  Bradley  261 

7.     Such  a  point  of  view  does  not  forthwith  resolve  Bradley's 
logical  difficulties  about  relations;  but  it  eases  to  a  degree  the 
general  situation.    If  it  is  no  business  of  knowledge  to  go  be- 
yond appearances, — the  "nature"  of  objects,  that  is, — then  it 
does  not  stultify  itself  because  it  fails  to  merge  with  feeling, 
while  still  retaining  its  special  relational  character.     It  does 
not  aim  to  be  existence,  but  only  to  think  existence  truly — to 
take  up  into  itself  cognitively  the  ideal  content  which  existence 
really  has.    And  if  it  can  accomplish  this,  there  is  no  reason 
why  we  should  refuse  to  say  that  in  knowing  reality  as  it 
appears,  we  know  it  as  it  is.    Just  because  knowledge  is  ap- 
pearance, it  does  not  know  appearance.    It  knows  the  reality 
which  appears — which  has,  that  is,  the  qualities  and  relation- 
ships that  in  the  idea  are,  for  a  special  purpose,  and  not  on 
account  of  any  cognitive  inadequacy  in  us,  given  into  our  grasp 
apart  from  their  embodiment  in  the  existing  world.    Knowledge 
is  not  the  outcome  of  a  disintegration  in  immediate  feeling, 
whereby  both  factors  are  mutilated  and  forced  to  look  for  some 
unknown  form  of  reconciliation.     To  know  is  to  apprehend 
the  nature  of  an  object  presented  to  us,  along  with  the  recogni- 
tion that  this  nature  is  not  a  mere  fact  of  logic,  but  something 
that  has  an  actual  embodiment  in  the  existing  world;   it  is 
through  this  contemplative  recognition  of  the  settled  presence 
of  the  ideal  character  in  the  real  object,  and  not  through  the 
recognition  of  its  relation  to  an  immediate  experience  of  feel- 
ing from  which  it  has  been  provisionally  estranged,  that  the 
reference  to  existence  enters  into  the  judgment.     And  there 
seems   no   reason   at   all   why   a   description   of   the  nature 
of  a  thing  should  be  falsified  merely  because  it  is  a  descrip- 
tion, and  not  the  thing  itself.     It  is  true  that  the  descrip- 
tion is  always  partial,  and  therefore  liable  to  be  modified  by 
other  features  yet  to  be  discovered.     But  we  have  no  ground 
for  supposing  that  this  completer  understanding  must  needs 
turn  our  present  knowledge  into  error, — that  the  elements  of 
truth  that  we  now  possess  might  not  persist,  essentially  un- 


262        English  and  American  Philosophy 

cha,nged,  as  our  knowledge  is  enlarged.  Bradley^s  warning 
against  regarding  any  aspect  as  real  "in  itself"  takes  advantage 
of  an  ambiguity;  because  a  fact  cannot  really  exist  by  itself, 
in  isolation  from  the  world  to  which  it  belongs,  it  does  not 
follow  that  it  may  not  be  real  in  itself — may  not  in  so  far  have, 
in  the  context  to  which  it  belongs,  just  the  character  that  it 
professes  to  have. 

8.  To  deal  at  all  adequately  with  Bradley^s  destructive 
criticism  of  relations  is  impossible  without  becoming  involved 
in  an  extended  and  intricate  discussion.  There  is,  one  must 
grant,  some  justification  for  the  complaint  that  discursive 
thought  is  in  a  sense  artificial,  and  fails  to  attain  the  point  of 
view  from  which  organic  unity  springs.  Thinking  which 
passes  from  one  link  to  another  in  an  endless  chain,^and  all 
thinking  that  deals  with  particular  facts  of  existence  necessarily 
does  this, — is  in  danger  of  missing  something  of  the  inner 
meaning  of  the  real.  Certainly  the  concrete  particulars  which 
make  up  the  world  can  never  be  exhausted  by  a  being  who 
starts  from  a  few  isolated  items,  and  attempts  to  piece  these 
out  by  inference, — if  for  no  other  reason,  because  he  cannot 
take  a  step  in  inference  without  adding  therebv  a  new  fact 
that  calls  for  further  attention.  But  if  the  world  turned  out  to 
have  some  systematic  character  as  a  whole,  there  rf^mains  a 
chance  that  this  might,  in  an  abstract  way,  be  grasped  in 
thought.  The  suggestion  of  such  a  possibility  is  found  in 
Bradley  himself;  why  might  not  the  higher  reaches  of  experi- 
ence— experience  as  it  has  become  already  modified  by  the 
results  of  thinking — furnish  a  type  of  the  more  intimate  con- 
nection between  things  which  we  desiderate,  and  so  provide  a 
hypothetical  form  to  be  brought  to  the  interpretation  of  the 
world,  that  escapes  from  the  mere  linkage  of  facts?  The 
aesthetic  experience  is  a  promising  example;  here  it  is  possible 
to  hold  that  we  have  an  instance  of  that  luminous  inner  unity 
we  are  looking  for,  above  relations  in  a  sense,  as  mere  feeling 
is  below  them.    And  from  a  realistic  point  of  view,  there  is  no 


F.  H.  Bradley  263 

reason  why  this  should  not  provide  perfectly  good  knowledge 
so  far  as  it  goes.  A  non-discursive  form  of  experience  can,  if 
we  have  once  experienced  it,  later  on  be  known,  provided- 
knowledge  is  not  definable  simply  as  a  dialectical  process,  but 
includes  the  power  to  contemplate  in  their  proper  nature  reali- 
ties independent  of  the  act  of  knowing;  nor  is  there  any  reason 
why  our  relational  thinking,  even,  should  not  be  valid  of  it, 
though  doubtless  it  cannot  be  completely  exhausted  by  analysis. 
Because  relations  have  thus  entered  into  a  significant  whole, 
where  each  element  is  felt  in  its  bearing  on  all  the  rest,  they 
have  not  ceased  to  be  relations;  the  relations  which  the  critic 
discovers  in  a  work  of  art  are  the  same  relations  that  he  feels 
to  be  there  before  his  critical  apparatus  is  applied,  or  criticism 
would  be  wholly  futile. 

For  Bradley,  however,  all  this  is  excluded  by  the  peculiarities 
of  his  thesis.  Since  relations  by  hypothesis  have,  in  a  higher 
experience,  entered  into  a  different  context,  for  him  they  are 
no  longer  what  they  were;  or,  put  differently,  since  logical 
thinking  is  not  of  reality,  but  is  reality  at  a  particular  level, 
when  it  passes  into  a  different  form  of  experience  it  ceases  to 
be  relational,  and  so  escapes  all  our  categories.  But  after  all 
the  fact  remains  that  we  do  have  a  knowledge  of  non-discursive 
forms  of  experience,  and  mmt  have  some  knowledge  of  them 
if  we  are  to  talk  of  them  at  all;  and  knowledge  cannot  safely 
be  defined  in  a  way  to  make  it  impossible  that  we  should  know 
things  that  we  actually  do  know.  Meanwhile  it  is  hardly  sur- 
prising that  Bradley  himself  should  give  up  the  attempt  to 
realize  the  nature  of  the  whole  with  the  instruments  which  he 
leaves  at  his  disposal ;  a  world  from  which  the  self  with  all  its 
purposes  and  experienced  realizations  has  been  discarded,  and 
whose  material  is  nothing  but  the  mass  of  "finite  centers'^  of 
experience  fused  in  one  unchanging  unity  of  feeling,  cannot  be 
expected  to  reveal  its  secret  to  human  thought. 

9.  There  remain  plenty  of  dialectical  difficulties  about  the 
nature  of  relations,  which  it  is  not  an  easy  matter  to  resolve. 


264        English  and  American  Philosophy 

One  caution  however  should  not  be  overlooked.  It  is  hazardous 
to  lump  relations  together  without  regard  to  the  empirical 
differences  they  show.  The  relationships  that  constitute  "or- 
ganic" unity  are  what  give  most  plausibility  to  the  claim  that 
relations  are  internal  to  their  terms.  Where  a  unity  of  end  or 
meaning  is  involved,  this  does  actually  permeate  the  terms 
in  so  far  as  they  are  members  of  the  whole;  the  character  of  a 
hand  as  a  hand  would  cease  on  its  ceasing  to  be  a  part  of  the 
body,  and  the  character  of  a  note  as  entering  into  a  melody 
would  disappear  if  the  melody  were  broken  up  into  its  con- 
stituents. But  there  are  other  instances  where  the  case  is 
much  less  clear;  so  far  as  appearance  goes,  the  qualitative 
nature  of  red,  for  example,  does  not  depend  upon  its  relation 
to  blue,  but  would  be  equally  what  it  is  were  there  no  other 
colors  to  compare  it  with.  Meanwhile,  before  we  are  in- 
timidated by  the  threat  of  an  infinite  regress,  the  possibility 
deserves  to  be  considered  that,  even  if  a  relation  is  merely 
"found,"  it  still  does  not  require  another  relation  to  connect  it 
with  its  terms,  simply  because  it  is  a  relation  to  begin  with, 
and  the  nature  of  a  relation  is  not  to  be  related,  but  to  relate. 


§  4.    Bernard  Bosanquet 

I.  In  certain  important  respects,  Bernard  Bosanquet  may 
be  regarded  as  a  follower  of  Bradley,  and  his  logical  theory, 
in  particular,  is  throughout  influenced  by  Bradley's  Logic.  But 
on  the  other  hand  he  is  much  closer  to  Hegel  than  Bradley 
was ;  and  it  is  not  always  easy  to  reconcile  the  two  strains.  In 
spite  of  a  general  adherence  to  the  metaphysics  of  his  prede- 
cessor, the  flavor  of  nescience  has  very  largely  disappeared. 
The  justification  of  this  change  of  emphasis  is  mediated  by  a 
use  of  the  distinction,  already  suggested  by  Bradley  himself, 
between  discursive  thought  and  experience.  Bosanquet  seems 
to  hold,  that  is,  to  the  possibility  that  thought  in  the  narrow 


Bernard  Bosanquet  265 

sense  can  be  precipitated  and  stored  in  more  developed  forms 
of  experienced  immediacy,  and  that  our  acquaintance  with  ^ 
such  thought-fertilized  experience  opens  up  therefore  a  chance 
that  our  thinking  may  not  be  so  far  removed  from  reality  as 
Bradley  had  supposed.  In  this  way  he  thinks  it  possible  to 
maintain  the  fimdamentally  logical  character  of  reality  even 
in  its  concreteness  and  immediacy,  while  yet  avoiding  the 
criticism  that  charges  the  idealist  with  mere  "intellectualism." 

In  appealing  to  experience  as  more  inclusive  than  thought, 
then,  we  are  not  to  understand  that  knowledge  is  to  be  de- 
posed from  its  central  place.  The  logical  motive  is  still  supreme 
for  understanding  the  nature  of  experience;  it  is  the  logical 
nisus,  the  endeavor  of  a  part  to  find  its  completion  in  a  whole, 
which  supplies  the  clue  to  all  that  is  significant  in  the  world 
and  its  development.  The  center  of  Bosanquet's  philosophy, 
alike  as  logic  and  as  metaphysics,  is  the  conception  of  "indi-i<^ 
viduality"  as  a  systematic  whole  expressing  itself  in  every  part. 
Such  an  individual  whole,  by  definition  identifiable  with  the^ 
real  universe  in  its  totality,  is  alike  the  goal  of  knowledge, 
the  end  of  conduct,  and  the  supreme  object  of  admiration  and 
devotion.  Against  this  stands  the  tendency,  the  root  of  most 
that  is  bad  in  philosophizing,  to  take  as  individual,  as  some- 
thing essentially  real,  the  starting  point  of  knowledge  rather 
than  its  outcome.  True  individuality  means  self-existence, 
self-dependence,  completeness;  and  nothing  can  be  an  indi- 
vidual therefore  beyond  which  there  lie  other  things  to  limit 
it.  Bosanquet's  pages  are  a  sustained  polemic  against  splitting 
reality  into  parts,  going  back  to  the  simple  instead  of  forward 
to  the  more  comprehensive,  taking  some  supposed  core  of  ex-  ^ 
istence,  such  as  sensations  or  finite  selves,  as  truly  real,  and 
reducing  the  whole  to  a  product  of  their  unessential  com- 
bination. 

2.  If  this  be  taken  simply  as  logic,  there  is  one  sense  in 
which  it  represents  a  truth  not  apt  to  be  disputed.  If  we  try 
to  understand  at  all,  we  are  compelled  to  assume  the  intercon- 


266        English  and  American  Philosophy 

nection  of  things;  and  the  more  we  know  about  this  intercon- 
nection, the  more  we  are  likely  to  comprehend  the  full  nature 
of  any  object  in  particular.  For  knowledge,  stability  and 
satisfaction  are  not  to  be  found  at  the  beginning,  but  in  the 
larger  vistas  that  free  us  from  the  narrowness  of  mere  un- 
mediated  facts.  And  if  we  wish  to  call  this  total  realm  of 
things  by  the  name  of  the  Absolute,  it  may  be  a  convenience 
in  terminology.  But  the  recognition  that  there  is  a  whole  of 
some  sort  does  not,  in  so  far,  tell  us  anything  whatever  about 
the  character  of  its  wholeness.  Conceivably  we  might  find 
it,  in  a  measure,  a  whole  only  loosely  bound  together  in  a 
relatively  external  way,  a  connection  of  reals  existing  in  con- 
junction, and  having  relations  such  as  those  of  time  and  space, 
similarity  and  difference,  without  the  more  intimate  bonds  that 
certain  of  our  purposive  and  significant  human  experiences 
reveal.  Of  course  wherever  such  a  higher  imity  is  found,  it 
ought  to  be  recognized;  but  logic,  and  the  mere  truism  that 
the  more  we  know  about  a  thing  the  more  we  know  its  con- 
nections, does  not  require  that  of  necessity  we  have  to  find 
it  everywhere. 

And  it  is  not  perfectly  self-evident,  even,  that  so  intimate 
and  comprehensive  a  unity  is  always  to  the  advantage  of 
the  thinker.  If  we  allow  logic  to  have  anything  to  do  with 
that  instrumental  character  which  unquestionably  is  an  aspect 
of  empirical  thinking,  thought  seems  often  quite  content  to 
stop  with  relative  disjunctions  and  partial  lines  of  connection. 
Indeed  it  is  only  as  the  knowledge  of  a  general  schema  of 
reality,  lacking  in  all  but  the  vaguest  recognition  of  its  par- 
ticular features,  and  satisfying  spiritual  rather  than  scientific 
needs,  that  any  philosopher  has  ever  been  able  to  find  a  use 
for  his  ideal  of  a  systematic  whole;  for  science,  whose  interest 
is  not  to  get  a  rapt  vision  of  the  divine  purpose  in  its  concrete 
totality,  but  to  guide  conduct  aright,  it  is  an  actual  gain  to 
simplify  the  situation,  and  to  take  the  immediately  relevant 
connections  in  their  separation  from  a  context  which  quickly 


Bernard  Bosanquet  267 

becomes  unmanageable.  It  is  not  easy  to  see  how  an  attempt 
to  view  form  and  number  in  the  light  of  their  spiritual  sig- 
nificance in  the  universe  would  advance  the  study  of  mathe- 
matics; and  the  more  we  override  the  specific  serial  ordering  of 
events  in  the  interests  of  reducing  causality  to  a  complete  "sum 
of  conditions,"  the  less  relation  it  bears  to  the  work  of  actual 
scientific  discovery.  For  certain  types  of  conduct  we  need, 
to  be  sure,  a  very  broad  understanding  of  the  world,  to  which 
nothing,  so  far  as  we  can  tell  beforehand,  may  come  amiss. 
But  if  we  are  going  to  appeal  at  all  to  the  empirical  needs  of 
conduct,  we  ought  to  recognize  that  these  needs  vary,  and  are 
often  met  by  exclusion  rather  than  by  inclusiveness.  Indeed 
they  are  always  so  in  some  degree;  an  absolute  vision  of  the 
whole  in  its  concreteness  would  bear  no  relation  to  conduct, 
since  if  it  could  be  realized  conduct  would  be  superseded.  It 
seems  most  natural  to  interpret  the  whole  belief  in  unity  as 
itself  a  pragmatic  demand,  a  presupposition  of  logic  which  is 
not  itself  susceptible  of  logical  or  metaphysical  demonstration. 
The  first  point  of  difficulty,  then,  concerns  this  transition 
from  a  unity,  as  a  mere  formal  demand  of  thought,  to  the 
particular  kind  of  unity  which  alone  shows  the  marks  of  "indi- 
viduality"— the  unity  of  purpose,  or — not  to  imply  the  tem- 
poral sequence  which  enters  into  human  purposes — of  signifi- 
cance, or  spiritual  meaning.  Where  do  we  get  the  assurance 
that  the  universe  as  a  whole  is  a  realization  of  spiritual  value? 
It  would  be  most  consistent  with  idealistic  presuppositions  to 
suppose  that  we  get  it  from  an  analysis  of  the  accepted  world 
of  knowledge;  but  the  facts  do  not  bear  out  such  a  claim. 
That  the  content  of  human  history  progressively  tends  to  em- 
body such  a  unity  of  purpose,  might  be  allowed;  and  accord- 
ingly idealism  is  always  at  its  best  when  it  is  interpreting  the 
world  of  institutional  values.  But,  for  any  knowledge  that 
we  can  safely  presuppose  to  start  with,  human  experience  has 
its  roots  in  a  far  vaster  world,  where  not  only  does  significance 
fail  to  reveal  itself  unambiguously,  but  where  we  are  almost 


268        English  and  American  Philosophy 

surely  led  astray  in  practice  if  we  try  to  import  it.  We  may 
have  our  methods  of  reinterpreting  this  scientific  universe  to 
bring  it  into  line  with  purpose;  but  at  best  the  interpretation  is 
a  debatable  one,  and  is  not  forced  upon  us  by  the  plain  facts 
of  knowledge.  It  remains,  accordingly,  to  find  the  source  of 
our  confidence  in  the  formal  demands  of  thought  or  logic; 
we  may  argue,  that  is,  that  full  intelligibility  is  given  to  reality 
only  in  case  we  suppose  the  connected  elements  to  enter  into  a 
significant  whole,  which  unites  them  through  the  presence  of  a 
plan  or  meaning  for  whose  expression  they  are  needed.  And 
undoubtedly  we  should  like  to  see  such  an  intelligible  neces- 
sity in  our  thought  constructions;  but  is  it  also  a  necessity  of 
thought  that  this  demand  must  needs  be  gratified?  The  claim 
on  the  part  of  a  finite  creature  to  a  specific  sort  of  intellectual 
satisfaction,  no  more  than  to  a  specific  sort  of  emotional  satis- 
faction, can  be  supposed  to  impose  laws  upon  the  universe, 
apart  from  an  act  of  faith  that  goes  definitely  beyond  the  logical 
reason.  If  indeed  it  were  ever  safe  to  presuppose  in  philosophy 
that  problems  have  been  settled  once  for  all,  we  might  refer 
here  back  to  Hegel;  for  Hegel  has  shown,  it  may  be  said,  that 
a  significant  whole  is  the  necessary  outcome  of  the  movement 
of  thought,  since  only  thus  can  we  escape  the  contradictions 
that  emerge  on  every  lower  plane.  Most  people,  however,  will 
be  less  sure  than  Hegel  that  two  opposing  statements  "con- 
tradict" when  they  are  taken  in  different  senses,  and  in  respect 
of  a  different  aspect  or  relationship;  and  while  no  doubt  the 
full  truth  will  contain  both  aspects,  they  do  not  find  it  evident 
that  this  is  bound  to  mean  that  they  are  taken  up  into  a  new 
and  individual  category.  And  that  in  any  case  Hegel  has 
actually  succeeded  in  capturing  all  the  truth  about  reality  for 
a  single  category,  itself  free  from  contradictions,  a  follower  of 
Bradley  at  least  can  hardly  be  expected  to  maintain. 

3.    The  point  of  this  contention  might  of  course  be  dulled 
if  we  were  to  accept  the  idealistic  denial  of  any  difference  be- 


Bernard  Bosanquet  269 

tween  the  logical  processes  of  thought  and  reality  itself;  and 
as  Bosanquet  is  peculiarly  insistent  in  this  denial,  some  further 
remarl^s  may  conveniently  be  made  upon  it  here.  After  mak- 
ing the  necessary  qualifications,  we  may  grant  the  virtues  of 
an  ideal  of  philosophy  which  conceives  it  as  an  attempt,  apart 
from  the  limitations  of  particular  ends,  to  think  the  general 
nature  of  the  universe  as  a  whole,  in  a  way  that  shall  throw 
light  upon  the  special  concepts  which  the  mind  employs 
through  a  discovery  of  their  implication  in  a  more  organic  unity. 
From  this  standpoint,  thought  may  be  regarded  as  a  self-depend- 
ent process  whose  driving  force  is  the  need  to  remove  contradic- 
tions, and  to  displace  the  incoherency  of  a  first  view  of  things  by 
an  organized  system  requiring  nothing  beyond  itself  to  render 
it  intelligible.  ''Truth"  is  this  systematic  whole  at  which 
thought  aims.  Nothing  in  consequence  can  in  this  sense  be 
wholly  true,  as  Bradley  had  urged,  except  the  Absolute  itself; 
a  lesser  judgment  that  falls  short  of  this  has  only  a  degree  of 
truth,  a  degree  that  can  be  gauged  by  the  success  with  which 
it  gathers  up  and  reconciles  discordant  elements.  This  means 
that  no  judgment  possesses  truth  in  its  own  right,  but  only 
by  virtue  of  its  logical  connection  with  other  judgments  in  a 
system;  we  call  it  true  when  its  assertion  leads  to  a  completer 
harmonizing  of  the  data  than  its  denial  would.  On  the  other 
hand,  no  judgment  is  completely  false;  for  it  contains  a  logical 
content  which  it  is  obvious  cannot  be  reduced  to  sheer  non- 
being,  and  which  consequently  must  find  some  place  in  the  sys- 
tem which  includes  everything  that  is.  The  falsity  of  the 
judgment  means  that  it  is  partial,  as  all  human  judgments  are, 
though  in  varying  degrees;  and  especially  is  it  false  when,  being 
partial,  it  is  taken  by  some  one  as  completely  true. 

At  best  however  it  seems  very  doubtful  whether  this  ideal 
of  method,  taken  alone,  serves  fully  any  purpose  other  than 
that  of  a  philosophic  contemplation  of  the  abstract  character 
of  existence.  Whatever  its  aspirations,  the  "concrete  universal" 
with  which  it  really  leaves  us  is  one  of  concepts  only,  and 


270        English  and  American  Philosophy 

not  of  the  concrete  actualities  of  the  existent  world,  with  its 
particular  contingent  data.  The  problems  with  which  Bosan- 
quet  is  dealing  are  all  of  them  problems  of  the  logical  interpre- 
tation of  categories;  and  even  if  we  do  find  these  categories 
implicated  in  a  system,  it  still  remains  a  part  of  the  business  of 
philosophy  to  try  to  understand  the  actual  complexity  of  the 
imiverse  of  particular  facts  and  processes.  And  then  we  are 
once  more  met  by  the  claim  that  our  knowledge,  and  the  things 
we  know,  are,  concretely,  two  quite  different  facts  within  the 
universe,  which  it  is  one  of  the  tasks  of  thinking  to  adjust. 
Accordingly  if  we  start  by  denying  the  right  to  raise  such  a 
problem,  it  can  only  be  because  we  are  willing,  again,  to  take 
the  real  world,  and  the  realm  of  descriptive  logic,  as  identical, 
and  refuse  to  entertain  the  notion  that  thought  has  any  sig- 
nificant connection  with  a  finite  thinker. 

Now  there  is  an  important  sense  in  which  it  may  indeed  be 
said  that  it  is  not  man  who  judges,  but  the  world  that  judges 
in  him;  true  thought,  that  is,  does  not  depend  on  personal 
caprice,  but  follows  its  own  objective  leadings,  and  we  in  a 
sense  stand  off  and  note  the  direction  which  it  takes.  This 
ignores,  to  be  sure,  the  equally  apparent  fact  that  although,  our 
premises  once  chosen,  logic  determines  the  conclusions  we  shall 
draw  from  them,  it  does  not  determine  the  selection  of  the 
starting  point;  and  this,  in  a  world  too  complex  for  us  to  start 
from  everything  at  once,  introduces  a  large  element  of  sub- 
jectivity into  the  thinking  even  of  philosophers.  But  in  any 
case  what  legitimately  follows,  is  only  that  the  world  is  one 
where  logical  relations  hold  such  as  our  thought  can  follow  out, 
and  not  that  logical  processes  as  such  constitute  the  movement 
of  reality  itself,  and  require  no  aid  from  a  human  thinker. 
Bosanquet  seems  almost  on  the  point  of  recognizing  the  dis- 
tinction here,  when  he  grants  that  objective  ''meanings"  can 
be  entertained  by  the  mind  without  being  identified  with 
reality.  The  explanation  which  he  goes  on  to  give  of  this  seeks, 
indeed,  to  retract  any  dangerous  admission,  and  to  return  to 


Bernard  Bosanquet  271 

pure  logic;  the  world  of  objective  reference,  that  is,  and  the 
world  of  reality,  are  actually  the  same  world,  regarded  in  the 
former  case  as  composed  of  isolated  though  determined  con- 
tents, and  in  the  latter  case  as  composed  of  contents  determined 
by  systematic  combination  in  a  single  coherent  structure  ^  But 
we  still  are  lacking  in  an  explanation  of  how  these  fragments 
can  be  held  apart  from  reality,  without  acquiring  a  standing  of 
their  own  as  "ideas";  and  in  any  case  the  fact  is  that  our 
world  of  objective  meanings  has  any  degree  of  coherency  de- 
manded, and  that  the  idea  of  the  universe  enters  just  as  much 
into  the  convention  of  discourse  as  any  other  idea.  If  one 
did  not  have  a  theory  to  maintain,  it  would  seem  far  more 
natural  to  say  that  the  world  of  reality  goes  beyond  the  world 
of  meanings,  precisely  through  the  fact  that  ideal  characters 
there  possess  a  status  which  is  more  than  logical,  and  so  stand 
existentially  apart  from  the  human  thought  about  them.  Since, 
Bosanquet  remarks,  the  world  of  truth,  and  the  world  of  mean- 
ing, are  distinguished  only  as  part  and  coherent  whole,  they  are 
not  really  distinct,  and  logic  investigates  a  single  process  of 
the  whole  which  is  the  truth  or  reality.  But  whether  truth, 
or  complete  logical  content,  can  be  identified  with  reality,  is 
the  entire  point  at  issue. 

4.  By  use  of  the  same  distinction,  we  may  meet  the  para- 
doxes of  the  idealistic  theory  of  truth  and  error.  If  "truth" 
has  no  other  meaning  than  harmony  and  completeness  of  logical 
content, — and  it  need  not  be  denied  that  it  has  this  meaning 
among  others, — then  indeed  there  can  be  but  a  single  truth; 
of  human  truths  none  are  wholly  true,  or  wholly  false,  and 
when  an  American  humorist  spoke  of  the  report  of  his  death  as 
being  exaggerated,  he  was  unintentionally  a  profound  philoso- 
pher. Here  the  implication  is  that  truth  moves  wholly  within 
the  world  of  logical  description;  when  I  talk  of  the  truth  of 
anything,  I  mean  all  that  is  true  about  it,  its  complete  explana- 
tion, and  connection  with  the  rest  of  reality.     But  truth,  or 

^  Logic,  Vol.  I,  p.  s.  (2nd  Ed.) 


2^2        English  and  American  Philosophy 

"trueness,"  has  also  a  significance  that  adds  to  this  a  specifi- 
cally human  reference,  and  that  presupposes  a  distinction  be- 
tween my  thinking  and  the  object  whose  nature  I  assume  to 
know;  and  if  a  particular  element  of  content  really  belongs,  not 
to  the  world  at  large,  but  to  the  particular  part  of  the  world  to 
which  my  thought  intends  to  refer,  then  my  judgment  is  true 
without  reservation,  regardless  of  what  more  may  be  true  also. 
It  is  only  certain  kinds  of  truth  that  are  seriously  in  danger 
of  being  "transformed"  by  the  discovery  of  their  wider  con- 
nections. A  scientific  theory,  such  as  the  nebular  hypothesis 
or  the  theory  of  evolution,  or  a  social  ideal  that  involves  com- 
plex human  purposes,  we  all  recognize  as  likely  to  change  in 
incalculable  ways  with  the  further  growth  of  knowledge;  but  a 
categorical  judgment  of  fact,  if  it  is  true  at  all,  we  may  acqui- 
esce in  with  the  confidence  that  here  is  something  that  all 
theory  must  respect  and  leave  in  its  integrity,  whatever  ad- 
ditional information  about  it  may  be  forthcoming. 

There  may  be  good  reason  to  hold  that  the  criterion  of  truth, 
the  intellectual  test  that  tells  us,  when  we  are  in  doubt,  what 
truths  in  particular  are  true,  Hes  in  the  success  with  which  a 
given  claim  enters  without  contradiction  into  that  larger  system 
of  judgments  which  constitutes  our  already  accepted  knowledge 
of  the  world;  truth  can  only  be  tested  by  more  of  itself,  and 
not  by  something  outside  itself.  But  in  this  there  is  nothing 
inconsistent  with  the  supposition  that  the  entire  system  of 
ideal  content  which  makes  up  the  "what"  of  truth  may  be 
embodied  in  an  actual  world  of  existences.  For  the  "coher- 
ence" theory,  apparently,  we  begin  with  pure  logical  content, 
and  progressively  weave  this  into  a  pattern,  belief  attaching 
solely  to  the  absence  of  contradiction  in  the  outcome;  it  is 
quite  as  plausible  to  suppose  that  we  start  with  an  instinctive 
acceptance  of  certain  characters  in  particular  as  belonging  to 
an  actual  world  which  our  practical  lives  need  to  presuppose, 
and  that  it  is  the  force  of  this  original  belief,  modified  in  detail 
by  the  success  or  failure  of  experimental  action,  which  lends 


Bernard  Bosanquet  273 

to  "facts"  that  categorical  compulsion  before  which  mere  "sys- 
tems" have  to  bow.  For  Bosanquet,  the  "correspondence"  of 
thought  with  objects,  which  this  separation  of  human  ideas 
from  existence  would  appear  in  some  sense  to  imply,  is  taken 
always  as  reducing  knowledge  to  mere  copying,  a  useless  re- 
duplication of  reality  already  complete;  "the  underlying  ques- 
tion seems  to  be,"  he  writes  for  example,  "whether  in  cognition 
we  are  cooperating  in  the  self-maintenance  of  reality,  as  our- 
selves organs  within  it,  or  are  apprehending  ab  extra  some- 
thing finished  and  complete  apart  from  us."  There  is  no 
contradiction,  however,  between  apprehending  a  reality  as  it 
already  exists  beyond  the  act  of  knowledge,  and  making  a  con- 
tribution through  which  reality  is  enriched,  if  only  we  take 
knowing  in  its  natural  context,  and  do  not  assume  that  it  has 
no  other  function  than  either  to  be  reality,  or  to  repeat  it. 
Thought  effects  its  contribution  by  enabling  us  to  reconstruct 
the  world  about  us;  but  it  can  do  this  only  in  so  far  as  it  does 
adequately  reproduce  for  thought  the  particular  conditions 
which  conduct  has  to  take  into  account. 

5.  Waiving  however  epistemological  difficulties  of  the  more 
technical  sort,  and  granting  the  right  of  the  philosopher  to 
attempt  by  ideal  experiment  to  find  some  large  and  organizing 
concept  which  shall  illuminate  the  darkness  of  the  merely 
"given,"  and  turn  its  fragmentary  disorder  into  system,  what 
are  the  actual  merits  of  the  particular  solution  which  in  Bosan- 
quet's  hands  the  principle  of  individuality  supplies?  That  for 
him  the  finite  human  individual  is  not  the  clue  to  this  insight 
has  appeared  already;  the  finite  person  shows  his  unreality  by 
the  way  in  which  his  life  is  forced  to  get  its  content  by  passing 
beyond  its  own  narrow  boundaries.  The  true  individual  is 
not  the  atomic  and  exclusive  self,  but  the  wider  organic  unity 
— the  family,  the  state,  art,  religion — to  which  the  self  looks 
for  its  completion.  It  is  this  content  of  civilized  and  institu- 
tionalized culture  which  supplies  the  positive  inspiration  for 
Bosanquet^s  whole  philosophy;   it  gives  us  the  clue  to  the 


274        English  and  American  Philosophy 

nature  of  the  Absolute,  and  from  it  man  derives  practical  and 
ethical  guidance  for  his  life.  The  human  self  is  merely 
the  expression  of  one  of  the  partial  points  of  view  which  the 
richness  of  the  absolute  reality  requires;  it  is  the  '^spirit  of 
the  whole  working  in  and  through  a  limited  external  sphere." 
This  means  that,  on  the  side  of  its  finite  limitation,  the  con- 
scious life  is  to  be  thought  of  as  identified  with  certain  con- 
ditions in  the  physical  world  which  give  rise  to  what  we  know 
as  an  animal  body.  But  these  conditions  it  redeems  from  their 
mere  externality.  It  brings  to  light  their  implicit  meaning  as  a 
part  of  the  one  significant  system ;  moulded  by  nature,  it  elicits 
nature's  spirit,  a  secret  even  from  itself,  and  thereby  forms 
the  medium  through  which  the  absolute  experience  expresses  an 
essential  aspect  of  its  being. 

6.  On  its  more  verifiable  side,  as  an  interpretation  of  the 
inner  significance  of  human  experience,  such  a  conception  of 
the  self  is,  up  to  a  certain  point,  both  true  and  important. 
Clearly  there  is  a  sense  in  which  a  man^s  true  self  is  not  his 
separate  self-identity;  it  involves  relations  to  a  larger  whole. 
Bosanquet,  however,  insists  on  interpreting  this  in  a  particular 
way;  and  if  the  interpretation  is  not  accepted,  the  sole  alterna- 
tive he  will  allow  as  possible  is  the  conception  of  man  as  a 
bare  unit,  an  "exclusive  and  repellent  personality,"  with  no 
significant  connection  with  the  rest  of  the  universe.  And  the 
reason  for  his  inability  to  conceive  any  middle  ground  between 
total  absorption  and  total  isolation,  rests  again  on  the  identifi- 
cation of  reality  with  logical  content.  Naturally  if  we  reduce 
reality  to  logical  truth,  and  truth  to  significance,  we  shall  be 
able  to  assign  no  sense  to  any  claim  to  exclusiveness  of  exist- 
ence, except  as  we  suppose  it  to  deny  the  presence  of  signifi- 
cance or  meaning  altogether.  And  if  we  decline  to  adopt  so 
desperate  a  course,  then  the  institutional  realms  of  the  state, 
of  religion,  of  art,  since  they  undoubtedly  possess  significance, 
will  be  real  in  the  same  sense  in  which  the  self  is  real;  only 
they  are  more  real,  being  more  inclusive.    And  in  this  way  the 


Bernard  Bosanquet  275 

self  turns  into  a  mere  phase  of  institutional  experience,  with  no 
existence,  and  no  rights,  and  no  destiny,  save  as  these  are  con- 
ferred by  the  superior  ends  which  it  helps  express;  the  finite- 
ness  of  the  self  stands  for  mere  powerlessness,  mere  limita- 
tion,^ and  has  as  such  no  significant  role.  In  a  rather  surpris- 
ing passage  Bosanquet  frankly  puts  this  absorption  of  a  human 
self  in  the  ^'truer"  self  of  the  social  whole,  on  exactly  the 
same  level  as  the  absorption  of  a  philosophical  system  in  one 
that  is  logically  more  adequate.^ 

But  to  interpret  finite  individuals  as  "connections  of  content" 
within  the  real  individual  to  which  they  belong,  and  their  ex- 
istence as  only  the  "status  of  being  an  appearance" — the  par- 
tial aspect  of  a  logical  whole,^ — ^simply  does  not  match  with 
our  convictions  about  what  a  self  is.  Of  course  again  there 
is  an  undeniable  sense  in  which  the  "reality"  of  a  man  is  more 
than  his  bare  existence.  But  if  the  being  of  a  self  is  worthless 
in  separation  from  its  social  content,  significance  vanishes 
equally  in  the  absence  of  an  individual  self-identity  and  exist- 
ence; a  necessary  implication  in  the  very  value  which  tran- 
scends a  human  soul,  is  the  fact  that  all  values  are  meaningless 
apart  from  that  conscious  appreciation  of  value  which  only 
finds  a  place,  for  any  natural  way  of  thinking,  in  personal 
beings.  Bosanquet's  emphasis  is  *n  one  aspect  of  it  wholly 
justified.  Value  is  not  mere  feeling,  but  has  a  definite  and 
objective  content;  and  as  active  and  practical  beings,  it  is 
the  last  to  which  our  attention  ought  chiefly  to  be  directed. 
But  this  content  nevertheless  presupposes  all  the  time, — ^we  can 
overlook  it  because  it  is  thus  present  always, — that  there  is 
called  forth  in  us  by  the  object  of  value  a  feeling  attitude, 
without  which  "appreciation"  would  turn  into  a  mere  colorless 
recognition  of  fact. 

Bosanquet's  ability  to  ignore  this  is  due,  one  may  suspect, 

*  Vdite  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  p.  56. 
^Proceedings  of  the  Aristotelian  Society,  Vol.  XVIII,  p.  503. 

*  Philosophical  Theory  of  the  State,  p.  181 ;  Logic,  Vol.  II,  p.  258. 


276       English  and  American  Philosophy 

to  an  ambiguity  in  the  term  value,  or  significance,  to  which  his 
preoccupation  with  logic  tempts  him.  For  "value"  is  clearly- 
identified  by  him  at  times,  and  perhaps  fundamentally,  with 
logical  value,  or  implication  in  a  logical  system;  and  between 
this  and  "felt"  value  there  is  nothing  whatever  in  common, 
save  as  logical  system  may  itself  become  an  object  of  value, 
aesthetic  or  practical,  if  we  introduce  again  the  relation  to  a 
self  capable  of  appreciating  it  in  feeling  terms.  And  this 
furnishes  an  explanation  for  the  peculiar  fact  that,  when  we 
forget  differences  of  terminology,  the  actual  content  of  Bosan- 
quet's  system,  with  its  repudiation  of  the  "psychical,"  and  of 
the  human  form  of  purpose  even,  often  approaches  very  closely 
indeed  to  the  "naturalistic"  foes  of  idealism,  and  leaves  the 
Absolute  as  a  mere  theatre  for  the  interplay  of  natural  forces, 
having  no  community  either  with  the  "self"  of  Green,  or  with 
the  God  of  religion. 

7.  In  the  end,  however,  considerations  such  as  these  prob- 
ably will  have  less  weight  with  us  than  judgments  based  on 
cm*  immediate  sense  of  values  themselves.  And  there  is  a 
type  of  mind  that  always  will  draw  back  from  this  constant 
disparagement  of  the  finite  self,  from  the  insistence  that  the 
human  will  is  nothing  but  a  medium  through  which  the  uni- 
verse expresses  itself,  that  freedom  consists  only  in  subordina- 
tion to  social  and  spiritual  institutions,  that  the  destiny  of 
individuals  has  no  ultimate  significance,  and  that  in  the  senti- 
mental impersonalism  of  Dante's  treatment  of  Beatrice  we 
have  the  highest  way  of  dealing  with  the  fact  of  human  person- 
ality. We  apparently  possess  no  logical  instrument  such  as  will 
enable  us  to  appraise  authoritatively  the  difference  in  appeal 
which  values  make;  in  a  competition  of  ideals,  one  can  only 
set  the  rivals  side  by  side.  In  Bosanquet's  ideal  the  chief 
persuasiveness,  but  also  its  deficiencies  in  part,  lies  in  its 
aristocratic  qualities.  Since  the  fate  of  the  lower  experience  is 
to  be  absorbed  in  the  higher,  where  alone  it  has  significance 
and  truth,  we  are  called  upon  to  live  always  under  tension, 


Bernard  Bosanquet  277 

at  the  highest  level  to  which  our  insight  can  attain.  The  uni- 
verse we  are  to  conceive  as  a  "place  for  soul  making";  and 
the  essence  of  soul  quality  is  not  pleasantness,  or  comfortable- 
ness, or  mere  goodness  even,  but  greatness  and  splendor,  the 
"union  of  austerity  and  passion."  To  raise  in  this  sense  the 
level  of  life  justifies  civilization,  quite  apart  from  any  happiness 
that  individuals  may  secure;  indeed  the  more  deeply  we  see 
into  the  truth  of  human  nature,  the  more  we  recognize  that 
pain  and  evil  will  always  be  necessary  to  give  life  its  proper 
elevation  and  consistency.  Evil  is  here  not  to  be  eliminated, 
but  to  be  surmounted,  to  be  woven  into  the  texture  of  experi- 
ence so  that  life  may  p>ossess  that  tragic  quality  without  which 
it  will  seem  mean  and  trivial  to  the  aristocratic  mind. 

And  this  suggests  what  on  the  whole  would  appear  to  be  the 
most  fundamental  point  of  view  from  which  Bosanquet 's  ideal 
of  value  is  to  be  approached;  it  is  constituted  by  the  aesthetic 
interest,  rather  than  the  ethical.  Even  in  his  logic  the  ground 
is  set  for  a  certain  indifferentism  towards  evil.  Since  truth  is 
not  the  rightful  attributing  to  reality  of  specific  qualities  under 
the  lead  of  our  vital  interests,  but  only  a  matter  of  somehow 
getting  all  possible  content  into  a  single  comprehensive  judg- 
ment, we  are  bound  to  recognize  that  there  is  something  to  be 
said  for  every  claim  and  every  counter-claim.  "Error"  is  not 
to  be  repudiated,  but  absorbed;  all  varieties  of  relative  points 
of  view  and  one-sided  emphasis  come  together  in  the  one  ulti- 
mate experience  of  reality  and  value.  Now  this  is  not  an 
attitude  that  falls  in  easily  with  the  special  interests  of 
the  moralist ;  and  indeed  in  theory  it  appears  that  the  Absolute 
cannot  as  such  be  ethical,  though  ethical  values  are  present 
in  it.  The  final  truth  of  the  world  is  not  that  it  is  good,  but 
that  it  is  the  wider  set  of  conditions  out  of  which  the  good  life 
arises,  the  theatre  of  all  the  wealth  of  experience,  with  good 
and  evil  alike  playing  their  part.  Evil,  that  is,  is  not  ab- 
sorbed in  good.  It  is  absorbed  in  perfection,  where  it  still 
retains  a  positive  function;  and  perfection  is  a  higher  concept 


278       English  and  American  Philosophy 

than  the  good,  which  last  belongs  definitely  to  the  stage  of 
finite  experience,  and  not  to  reality  as  a  whole.  Even  re- 
ligion, therefore,  is  in  the  end  unreal.  Religion  means  the 
will  for  good  as  against  evil;  and  a  universe  in  which  this 
antithesis  is  absorbed  in  perfection,  cannot  be  identified  with 
a  God  who  represents  one-sidedly  the  triumph  of  good  alone.^ 
For  the  revelation  of  this  higher  point  of  view  we  are  re- 
ferred, though  not  without  some  hesitation,  to  the  aesthetic  con- 
sciousness. The  Absolute  is  the  great  Artist  before  whom  the 
drama  of  human  existence,  of  good  in  conflict  with  evil,  is 
staged;  and  the  highest  attainment  of  human  perfection  is  to 
purge  oneself  of  human  claims,  and,  in  the  spirit  of  tragic  aus- 
terity, to  catch  this  same  vision  of  life,  and  admiringly  to  call 
it  good.  More  precisely,  two  motives  may  be  distinguished 
here — the  dramatic  and  the  logical ;  though  in»both  the  aesthetic 
appeal  is  almost  equally  present  and  constitutive.  That 
acceptance  of  reality  without  rebellion  or  repining  which  has 
so  large  a  place  in  Bosanquet's  spiritual  ideal,  is  not  the 
realistic  acceptance  of  "fact,"  as  something  which,  since  we 
cannot  change  it,  it  is  the  business  of  the  wise  man  clear- 
sightedly to  adopt  and  build  upon.  Such  a  factual  reality  it  is 
necessary  to  recognize  if  our  lives  are  not  to  be  futile;  but 
there  is  no  particular  reason  to  idealize  it  as  perfection.  What 
alone  justifies  the  title  is  rather,  in  the  first  place,  the  aesthetic 
value  that  resides  in  the  logical  completeness  of  the  system  of 
reality,  in  the  presence  of  which  a  subjective  wilfulness  has  no 
standing.  And  accordingly  from  this  point  of  view  evil  persists, 
redistributed  and  resystematized,  in  the  Absolute,  precisely  as 
there  is  supposed  to  be  room  in  truth  for  the  elements  of  error; 
it  is  a  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil  in  terms  of  logic.  Of 
course  however  what  this  really  means  is,  that  no  qualities  of 
life  are  wholly  valueless  in  their  proper  place.^  And  accord- 
ingly such  a  solution  falls  short  in  an  essential  point;  moral 

^  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  pp.  216  f.,  250. 
^  Ibid.,  p.  217. 


Bernard  Bosanquef  279 

evil  consists  not  in  the  raw  material  of  desire  and  instinct,  but 
in  an  active  attitude.  This  attitude  of  will  is  what  the 
dramatic  concept  now  restores,  by  turning  the  world  of  mere 
logical  completeness  into  an  active  play  of  forces.  But  since 
thereby  the  latter  world  becomes  primarily  a  value,  not  for  the 
actor  who  strives  to  overcome  evil,  but  for  the  spectator  who 
finds  in  it  the  positive  source  of  his  emotional  exaltation,  the 
ethical  interest  tends  necessarily  to  subordinate  itself  to  the 
artistic. 

8.  There  is  to  be  sure  an  ethical  turn  that  we  may  give  to 
this,  if  we  suppose  the  gaze  of  the  spectator  to  be  shifted  from 
a  contemplation  of  the  universal  drama  to  his  own  inner  life. 
So  interpreted,  the  highest  good  comes  to  be  found,  not  in  re- 
moving evil,  but  in  retaining  all  the  ills  of  life  while  getting  rid 
merely  of  their  blindness  and  irrationality;  in  transforming 
"brute  agony  and  dumb  endurance  and  despair  into  spiritual 
conflict  and  triumph,"  and  raising  suffering  to  the  level  of 
tragedy.  And  such  a  triumph  over  necessary  evil  is  no  doubt 
an  essential  ingredient  in  the  spiritual  experience.  But  it  is 
not  clear  that  we  can  afford  to  stop  with  this,  and  leave  life  at 
its  highest  on  the  level  of  tragedy.  To  begin  with,  one  runs 
always  a  risk  of  attitudinizing  when  he  contemplates  his  own 
career  as  "tragic."  It  is  hard,  too,  not  to  suspect  that  the 
high  perfection  of  tragedy  is  more  apparent  when  one  is  himself 
comfortably  seated  in  the  audience,  free  from  the  poignancy 
of  the  tragic  situation.  And  at  least  this  insistence  on  a  "great 
and  splendid"  life  has  the  drawback  that  it  is  apt  to  generate 
a  blindness  to  the  milder  and  humaner  virtues,  and  a  disposi- 
tion to  look  with  something  like  contempt  upon  the  human 
weakness  which  limits  the  power  of  most  men  to  play  the 
role  of  tragic  hero. 

This  lack  of  sympathy  is  particularly  apparent  in  a  prac- 
tical attitude  toward  the  world  of  individual  "claims"  which 
there  has  already  been  occasion  to  note  as  implicit  in  the  natural 
logic  of  the  idealistic  school.    Bosanquet  has  little  but  impa- 


28o        English  and  American  Philosophy 

tience  with  the  prevalent  discontent  with  the  social  structure, 
the  crusade  against  political  and  industrial  injustice,  the  em- 
phasis on  the  right  to  individual  opportunity  and  happiness. 
The  cry  against  injustice  is  a  weak  and  pessimistic  complaint 
against  the  universe,  which  our  feeble  minds  are  quite  incom- 
petent to  sustain ;  with  the  existence  of  evil  justified  in  principle, 
we  ought  to  see  that  it  is  unreasonable  to  try  to  set  limits  to  the 
degree  in  which  evil  is  called  for  by  the  needs  of  perfection, 
or  to  mark  off  certain  evils  as  undesirable  and  deserving  of 
extinction.^  In  any  case,  for  the  individual  to  set  up  a  claim 
against  the  whole  is  to  reverse  the  true  notion  of  individuality, 
and  to  subordinate  reality  to  appearance.  The  duty  of  man  is 
to  awaken  to  his  own  nature,  and  his  unity  with  the  greater 
Mind,  rather  than  to  mould  the  course  of  the  world  as  an 
independent  cause;  ^  instead  of  "arbitrarily  preferring  some  one 
element  of  experience  to  the  whole,"  and  setting  out  to  weight 
the  scales  in  its  favor,  we  should  welcome  whatever  comes  to 
us, — or  to  others, — and  aim  only  to  assign  it  its  true  relative 
importance  in  the  perfection  of  the  universe.  Ethics  and  re- 
ligion join  hands  in  assuring  us  that  true  peace  and  excellence 
lie,  not  in  self-assertion,  not  in  individual  striving  even  for 
the  good,  but  in  offering  oneself  as  a  contribution  to  the  true 
being  of  the  universe,  in  accepting  correction  from  the  world 
and  adjusting  oneself  to  its  requirements,  in  cultivating  a 
"genuine  devoutness  and  loyalty  before  which  the  given  self 
seems  a  little  thing,  and  lightly  to  be  sacrificed  for  the  chosen 
transcendent  good."  Politically  this  means  that  the  individual 
ought  to  be  subordinated  to  the  social  will  embodied  in  the 
habits  and  institutions  of  his  community.  Such  a  will,  to  be 
sure,  is  imperfect ;  but  it  is  imperfect  only  because  it  is  incom- 
plete, and  not  because  it  ever  takes  a  radically  wrong  direction, 
or  shelters  injustice  and  oppression  which  the  individual  re- 
former, seeing  in  this  instance  more  truly,  may  set  himself  to 
eradicate.     If  Objective  Mind  is  incomplete,  at  least  it  is 

^Ibid.,  pp.  1^7  f.       'Principle  of  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  158. 


Bernard  Bosanquet  281 

always  more  complete  than  ideas  which  rule  any  individual 
mind ;  and  the  latter  has  accordingly  no  standing  in  court  when 
the  two  conflict.^ 

The  inference  is  a  fair  one;  but  only  again  in  case  we  ac- 
cept the  logical  theory  on  which  it  rests.  The  social  structure 
does  contain  more  truth  than  any  individual  mind  is  likely 
to  compass;  it  has  a  many-sidedness  which  only  very  labori- 
ously, and  never  quite  completely,  our  private  speculations 
trace.  And  if  breadth  of  compass  is  the  only  mark  of  truth, 
and  error  means  only  incompleteness,  then  the  smaller  scope 
of  the  individual  mind  is  decisive  as  against  his  right  to  criticize 
the  social  order.  But  a  more  natural  view  of  error  would 
allow  us  to  regard  the  attributing  of  some  particular  content  to 
reality  as  actually  true  or  false  without  reference  to  a  knowledge 
of  the  whole;  and,  consequently,  it  would  justify  the  proba- 
bility that  the  individual  mind  may  be  superior  in  insight  to 
the  General  Will  on  this  or  that  matter  of  detail,  although  it 
would  condemn  as  rash  the  rejection  of  social  experience  in 
its  entirety,  and  an  attempt  to  replace  it  wholesale  by  the 
efforts  of  the  private  reason. 

9.  As  the  perfection  of  the  Absolute  is  gained  by  a  refusal 
to  consider  the  human  self  as  an  existent,  so  Bosanquet  is 
enabled  by  the  same  method  to  construct  a  theory  of  the  rela- 
tion of  the  self  to  Nature  which  avoids  any  touch  of  the  dualism 
he  is  anxious  to  escape.  The  solution  comes  by  reducing  the 
substantial  facts  of  physical  process  at  work  independent  of, 
and  prior  to,  the  advent  of  man,  and  of  the  psychical  as  a 
distinctive  new  content  with  an  existential  status,  to  logical 
formulas — the  formula  of  "externality"  on  the  one  hand, 
and  of  significance  or  "interpretation"  on  the  other.  In  this 
way  the  conscious  life  becomes  nothing«which  it  is  necessary  to 
adjust  to  body,  but  merely  the  realization  of  the  meaning  al- 
ready implicitly  present  in  the  physical, — a  "supervenient  per- 
fection" which  constitutes  the  method  by  which  the  Ab- 
^  PMasophical  Theory  of  the  State,  p.  123. 


282        English  and  American  Philosophy 

solute  enhances  experience  for  itself.  Finite  consciousness  is 
only  an  awakening  to  the  significance  of  a  certain  realm  of 
externality  to  which  it  serves  as  a  center;  it  has  nothing  of 
its  own  but  the  "active  form  of  totality,"  and  everything  posi- 
tive it  derives  from  nature.^ 

If  nature  means  here  what  it  does  to  the  scientist, — ^and  we 
have  no  right  to  take  it  otherwise, — this  claim  that  no  new 
content,  but  only  a  higher  degree  of  relational  xmity,  is  pres- 
ent in  the  realm  of  mind,  is  not  very  easy  to  understand.  To 
say  for  example  that  painfulness  is  not  a  new  qualitative  effect 
appearing  on  the  occasion  of  a  physical  prick,  but  only  the  "in- 
terpretation" of  the  prick,  the  "appreciation  of  what  is  hap- 
pening," ^  seems  little  more  than  a  form  of  words,  which  sim- 
ply turns  aside  from  the  peculiar  essence  of  the  fact  to  be  ex- 
plained. If  by  "appreciation"  here  we  mean  awareness  merely, 
we  are  translating  the  entire  content  of  the  conscious  life  into 
terms  of  intra-bodily  movements;  and  this,  apart  from  other 
difficulties,  is  at  least  strange  doctrine  for  an  idealist.  If 
on  the  other  hand,  as  supposedly  is  true,  appreciation  is 
meant  to  have  a  reference  to  "value,"  we  find  ourselves  again 
drawing  on  the  ambiguity  previously  noted.  The  value  of  a 
work  of  art,  which  is  the  analogy  that  Bosanquet  has  in  mind, 
may  intelligibly  be  spoken  of  as  something  realized  in  a  con- 
tent, and  not  a  new  form  oj  content.  But  this  is  because  the 
work  of  art,  with  its  given  logical  structure,  can  make  a 
peculiar  impression  on  an  observer;  and  there  is  nothing  ana- 
logous to  an  observer  in  the  mind-body  situation,  unless  indeed 
we  are  ready  to  conceive  of  the  human  mind  as  a  picture 
painted  on  the  background  of  nature  for  an  eternal  Con- 
noisseur. 

And  even  the  verbal  solution  will  not  work  in  the  end,  ex- 
cept as  it  tacitly  abandons  the  conviction  from  which  the  prob- 
lem springs — the  existence  of  a  real  world  antecedent  to  human 

I  Principle  of  Individuality  and  Value,  pp.  160,  367. 
^  Ibid.,  p.  197. 


-'/ 


Bernard  Bosanquet  283 

experience.  Externality  has  no  meaning  for  the  Absolute,  we 
are  told,  except  as  it  passes  through  finite  minds.  The  natural 
world  is  nothing  but  the  system  of  all  individual  experiences; 
it  lives  only  in  the  efforts  of  all  spiritual  beings  to  sustain 
a  unity  of  experience,  taken  in  their  completeness  as  success- 
ful.^ "Our"  world  is  just  our  objective  experience  itself,  con- 
ceived as  playing  a  part  in  the  self-maintenance  of  the  eternal 
whole  which  absorbs  all  possible  facets  of  reality.  At  best,  the 
question  what  becomes  of  the  object  when  unexperienced  by 
finite  minds  is  a  "minor  matter,"  which  it  is  unnecessary  to 
pursue.  Of  course  if  nature  is  nothing  but  a  form  of  finite  ex- 
perience, of  a  relatively  low  degree  of  internal  unity  and  mean- 
ing, through  which  mind  passes  to  constantly  more  significant 
wholes,  then  the  problem  of  explaining  how  a  human  mind  can 
know  a  world  existing  as  a  prior  condition  of  human  experience 
will  be  solved  by  elimination;  and  the  task  of  reducing  all 
reality  to  terms  of  cultural  significance  becomes  much  simpler. 


§  5.    Josiah  Royce 

I.  In  Josiah  Royce,  the  most  eminent  of  the  American 
idealists,  a  new  and  original  turn  is  given  to  the  idealistic  pro- 
gram, whereby  the  logical  motive,  hitherto  chiefly  in  evidence, 
loses  its  predominance,  and  a  much  closer  approach  is  made 
toward  dealing  with  the  actual  difficulties  that  confront  the 
realistic  mind.  Royce  keeps  throughout  close  to  the  ground  of 
empirical  reality,  and  is  largely  free  from  that  disposition  to  hy- 
postasize  logical  concepts  which  Hegel's  influence  fostered. 
Instead  of  tacking  on  finite  experience,  as  the  English  Hegelians 
had  for  the  most  part  done,  to  an  Absolute  already  fully  char- 
acterized in  terms  of  timeless  logical  content,  and  having  there- 
fore no  obvious  room  for  it,  he  starts  by  taking  the  finite  fact 
seriously  as  a  bit  of  real  existence.    That  apparent  character 

^  Logic,  Vol.  I,  p.  84. 


284       English  and  American  Philosophy 

which  knowledge  possesses  in  the  shape  of  a  reference  beyond 
itself,  instead  of  being  slighted,  now  stands  as  a  necessary  step 
in  the  argument;  while  also  for  the  first  time  a  central  place  is 
given  to  activity  or  will,  as  against  mere  thought  or  intellect 
on  the  one  side  and  feeling  on  the  other.  So  to  the  diffi- 
culties arising  out  of  the  relation  between  the  finite  and  the  ab- 
^  solute, — for  the  most  part  treated  very  cavalierly  by  the  Eng- 
lish idealists, — Royce  keeps  returning  constantly.  Even  the 
timelessness  of  reality,  which  seems  ordinarily  to  make  so  hope- 
less any  chance  of  reconciliation  between  metaphysics  and 
everyday  common-sense,  is  interpreted  and  defended,  not  in 
terms  of  the  repugnance  of  pure  logic  to  the  time  process, 
but  on  the  empirical  and  psychological  basis  of  the  experience 
of  duration,  wherein  time  distinctions  are  transcended. 

2.  Royce's  argument  sets  out  from  the  common-sense  belief 
that  our  ideas  point  to  a  reality  beyond  themselves  and  their 
own  content.  This  postulate  seems  involved  everywhere  in 
our  natural  understanding  of  experience,  though  a  critical 
examination  shows  that  it  is  not  without  its  difficulties.  How 
can  a  state  of  mind  know  what  by  definition  is  not  present  to 
that  state  of  mind?  Must  not  an  object  somehow  be  already  in 
my  possession  if  I  am  to  mean,  or  intend  it?  How  can  I  be  cer- 
tain that  my  knowledge  hits  the  mark,  that' it  corresponds  to  the 
reality  I  mean  it  to  correspond  to,  if  this  reality  is  wholly  out 
of  reach,  and  beyond  the  possibility  of  testing?  And  yet,  on 
the  other  hand,  if  the  object  which  I  know  be  taken,  not  as 
something  beyond  the  knowing  exi>erience,  but  as  the  very 
content  now  present  to  the  consciousness  of  the  knower,  we 
have  indeed  escaped  the  former  difficulty,  but  only  at  the  ex- 
pense of  a  thoroughgoing  relativity  which  breaks  down  all  dis- 
tinction between  truth  and  error.  For  if  the  object  about 
which  I  judge  is  just  my  own  meaning  or  interpretation,  then 
I  can  never  be  mistaken;  and  in  consequence  no  such  thing 
as  objectively  valid  truth  exists.  What  any  man  believes  to 
be  true  is  true  for  him,  since  he  is  judging  about  an  object  open 


Josiah  Royce  285 

immediately  to  his  own  inspection;  and  his  judgment  cannot 
come  into  conflict  with  that  of  his  neighbor,  because  no  two 
men  judge  about  the  same  object. 

It  is  impossible,  however,  to  rest  in  a  doctrine  of  absolute 
relativity;  for  one  thing,  as  the  very  phrase  suggests,  it  contra- 
dicts itself.  Our  thesis  is  that  there  is  no  absolute  truth,  but 
that  what  each  man  thinks  is  true,  for  him  is  true.  But  then 
what  of  this  truth  that  there  is  no  absolute  truth? — is  this  also 
true  only  for  the  one  who  thinks  it?  Meanwhile  it  may  not 
be  impossible  to  make  sense  after  all  of  the  claim  of  an  idea 
to  "mean"  an  object.  There  is  one  situation  in  which  such  a 
claim  is  sufficiently  intelligible, — when,  that  is,  I  later  succeed  in 
getting  an  experience  which  fulfils  the  intent  of  my  earlier 
meaning.  Here  the  relation  of  correspondence  between  idea 
and  object  loses  its  opaqueness,  because  the  two  have  now  come 
together  within  a  single  unity  of  consciousness  where  they  can 
be  compared,  and  the  justice  of  the  claim  tested.  And  it  is 
only  in  this  way  that  the  possibility  of  error  can  be  explained. 
If  we  take  any  single  judgment  by  itself,  error  is  excluded  by 
the  fact  that  the  object  of  which  we  judge  is  for  us  precisely 
what  it  is,  and  nothing  else ;  error  has  meaning  only  in  terms  of 
a  wider  judgment  which  is  able  to  take  up  into  itself  the  nar- 
rower one,  and  note  its  deficiency.  I  find  myself  in  error,  there- 
fore, when  a  wider  reach  of  consciousness  reveals  the  partial 
character  of  a  previous  judgment;  and  I  can  conceive  the  possi-  ^ 
bility  of  error  even  when  as  yet  it  has  not  been  thus  corrected, 
in  terms  of  an  ideal  spectator  whose  range  of  consciousness  shall 
include  mine,  along  with  whatever  in  addition  is  necessary  to 
correct  my  one-sidedness. 

TnSh  and  error,  accordingly,  are  both  definable,  have  mean- 
ing, only  on  the  basis  of  a  unity  of  consciousness  which  brings 
the  judging  idea  into  connection  with  its  intended  object,  and  , 
so  reveals  the  presence  or  the  absence  of  the  correspondence 
which  the  idea  claims.  And  not  a  mere  possible,  but  an  actual 
consciousness  is  demanded,  since  mere  possibility,  facts  that 


286        English  and  American  Philosophy 

are  not  facts  for  someone,  ideal  determinations  not  embodied 
in  a  "that,"  it  is  impossible  for  the  mind  really  to  conceive. 
Let  us  doubt  then  to  the  uttermost.  But  doubt,  if  it  is  not  to 
be  a  word  without  meaning,  at  least  must  assume  the  possibility 
of  error,  and  so  the  existence  of  a  conscious  life  in  which  the 
answer  to  our  doubt  is  a  present  reality;  unless  thought  and  its 
object  are  parts  of  a  larger  thought,  I  cannot  even  so  much 
as  doubt.  Accordingly  whoever  has  a  belief,  whether  true  or 
false,  about  objects  beyond  the  moment  of  belief,  is  thereby 
shown  to  be  an  organic  part  of  a  reflective  and  larger  self; 
and  thus  we  have  the  assurance  of  reason  for  the  existence  of 
a  single  universal  Thought, — since,  if  we  try  to  think  it  as  mani- 
fold, this  manifoldness  would  still  be  a  truth  that  must  be  true 
for  a  more  comprehensive  unity, — in  which  all  possible  ques- 
tions that  mean  anything  at  all  receive  their  perfect  solution. 

3.  The  second  stage  of  Royce's  philosophical  devolpment 
is  in  a  way  already  implicit  in  his  doctrine  of  meaning;  but 
it  did  not  get  full  expression  until  he  was  confronted  by  the  need 
for  meeting  certain  ethical  objections,  based  on  the  apparently 
precarious  standing  of  the  finite  individual,  and  his  moral  life, 
when  reality  is  reduced  to  a  single  absolute  of  thought.  The 
form  which  the  problem  takes  is  that  of  accounting  for  the 
individual,  or  of  finding  the  principle  of  individuation.  For 
Bosanquet,  also,  the  individual  forms  the  central  problem  of 
philosophy;  but  in  his  case  an  interest  in  the  finite  person  is 
almost  wholly  confined  to  showing  that  this  is  not  an  individual 
in  the  truest  sense.  Royce  on  the  other  hand,  owing  to  his 
greater  preoccupation  with  the  moral  life,  is  concerned  pri- 
marily to  explain  how  there  comes  to  be  this  unique  focussing 
of  reality  in  human  selves,  while  at  the  same  time  safeguard- 
ing its  genuine  significance  in  the  world. 

And  the  solution  takes  the  form  of  assigning  to  Will,  and 
to  the  concept  of  purpose,  a  place  in  the  structure  of  reality 
hardly  suggested  in  his  earliest  writings.  In  God,  it  has  ap- 
peared, all  possible  questions  are  answered,  all  possible  ideas 


Josiah  Royce  287 

fulfilled.  If  we  were  content  with  a  merely  logical  universe, 
there  would  perhaps  be  no  great  harm  in  leaving  the  matter 
here;  but  we  have  elected  to  start  from  a  real  world  of  exis- 
tences, over  against  the  innumerable  ideal  possibilities  which 
have  no  existential  standing,  but  are  hypotheses  contrary  to 
fact.  Now  in  mere  thought,  which  alone  we  have  so  far  been 
using  to  interpret  the  Absolute,  there  is  no  ground  for  the 
preference  of  any  one  world  over  any  other.  All  are  equally 
possibilities  present  to  the  divine  consciousness;  and  some  new 
principle  needs  to  be  added  to  the  intellectual  one,  if  we  are 
to  explain  the  superior  reality  of  the  one  existing  world.  This 
principle,  then,  Royce  finds  in  Will.  The  essence  of  will  he 
takes  to  be  the  act  of  attention  which  singles  out  a  determinate 
aspect  of  content,  leaving  the  rest  in  the  background;  and  in 
order  to  explain  the  fact  of  the  one  preeminently  real  universe 
we  need  to  postulate  such  an  act  of  selective  attention,  whereby 
a  specific  system  of  ideas  is  realized  while  others  are  left  as 
mere  logical  possibilities, — an  act  that  from  another  angle  may 
be  regarded  as  the  divine  Love,  which  sets  up  an  object  of 
preference  unexplainable  on  merely  theoretical  grounds. 

And  now  the  same  principle  leads  to  a  theory  of  the  human 
self  also,  and  to  the  justification  of  his  significance  for  the  life 
of  God.  The  uniqueness  of  a  self,  no  more  than  the  unique- 
ness of  the  real  world,  can  be  understood  in  purely  theoretical 
terms.  Every  idea  without  exception  is  a  universal;  and  con- 
sequently there  is  no  way  in  which  we  can  define  it  so  as  to 
limit  it  to  a  single  exemplification.  It  is  only  as  a  thing  is  the 
one  thing  that  will  satisfy  an  interest  that  uniqueness  has  a 
meaning;  it  presupposes  a  particular  and  determinate  purpose, 
for  which  no  other  object  could  be  substituted.  (In  passing, 
the  question  may  suggest  itself  what  constitutes  that  unique- 
ness of  a  purpose  which  here  seems  to  be  assumed, — its  relation 
to  the  satisfaction  of  another  purpose?)  Now  the  unitary 
world-whole  is  differentiated  into  many  confluent  purposes;  and 
a  self  is  precisely  such  an  idea,  or  plan,  or  interest,  demanding 


288        English  and  American  Philosophy 

a  specific  form  of  fulfilment.  But  while  the  self  has  thus  no 
reality  outside  a  higher  individual  life  which  embodies  all  the 
wills  represented  by  finite  ideas,  nevertheless  these  finite  selves 
are  not  swallowed  up  and  abolished  in  the  divine  life.  If  they 
are  dependent  upon  God,  so  equally  is  God  dependent  upon 
them,  since  without  the  specific  contribution  that  each  one 
makes,  God  would  not  be  what  he  is;  and  as  God^s  will  is  free, 
an  autonomous  act  lying  deeper  than  the  phenomenal  world 
of  causal  connection,  so  each  self  shares  in  this  freedom,  and 
nothing  except  his  own  choice  in  all  the  universe  determines 
him. 

4.  In  the  light  of  this  conception,  Royce  reconstructs  his 
original  theory  of  knowledge,  by  assigning  explicitly  to  cognitive 
meaning  a  teleological  or  pragmatic  character.  The  interpreta- 
tion of  the  connection  of  idea  and  object  in  terms  of  a  ful- 
filling experience,  is  translated  into  the  more  specific  form  of 
a  relation  to  plan  or  purpose;  and  Royce  tries  to  show  how 
the  "external'^  meaning — of  correspondence — is  reducible  in 
the  end  to  an  "internal"  meaning  of  teleology — the  conscious- 
ness of  how  I  propose  to  act.  The  object  of  knowledge  is  thus 
nothing  but  a  specific  end,  already  present  implicitly  and  par- 
tially in  the  idea,  which  gets  its  explicit  fulfilment  in  that 
wider  consciousness  of  the  Absolute  where  both  the  purpose, 
and  its  realization,  alike  are  present.  The  proof  consists  partly 
in  an  attempt  to  show  the  absurdities  of  a  realistic  view  of 
being,  which  proposes  to  accept  as  final  the  notion  of  corre- 
spondence between  two  independent  entities,  and  partly  by  an 
ingenious  use  of  the  evidence  for  a  close  relation  between  knowl- 
edge and  will.  Thus  it  undoubtedly  is  true  that  knowledge 
is  a  "nascent  deed,"  in  the  sense  that  ideas  tend  to  pass  over 
into  appropriate  action;  and  this  pragmatic  relationship  is  at 
*  least  not  wholly  irrelevant  to  the  definition  of  the  object  itself, 
since  it  is  a  part  of  the  concept  of  a  knife,  for  example,  that 
it  is  used  for  cutting.  Again,  it  is  a  connection  with  active 
interest  that  alone  explains  why  our  attention  singles  out  this  or 


Josiah  Royce  289 

that  object  in  particular,  refers  to  or  means  it;  even  the  ab- 
stract constructions  of  science  may  be  called  an  embodiment 
of  our  purpose  of  convenience  in  explanation.  And  by  a 
subtle  use  of  the  symbolic  character  which  the  "image"  may 
have  in  knowledge,  and  of  the  fact  that  different  symbols  may 
be  useful  under  different  circumstances, — the  requirements  of 
mathematics,  for  example,  being  hindered  rather  than  ad- 
vanced by  concrete  imagery  appropriate  in  other  situations, — 
the  character  of  correspondence,  even,  is  made  definable  in 
terms  of  purpose,  the  sort  of  correspondence  to  be  demanded 
of  the  idea  being  determined  by  the  intention  of  the  idea  itself. 
5.  Only  a  brief  word  needs  to  be  added  about  Royce's  more 
recent  writings,  since  they  show  a  shift  of  emphasis  rather 
than  any  essential  difference  of  doctrine.  The  concept  of  the 
"social"  had  from  the  start  played  an  important  role  in  his 
thinking.  Thus  the  world  of  nature  is  altogether  a  social  prod- 
uct, as  that  which  forms  the  common  element  in  a  universe 
of  discourse;  and  even  to  God  we  are  related  only  through  our 
fellows.  In  his  later  years  this  notion  of  the  Community,  con- 
ceived as  a  higher  form  of  selfhood,  "as  truly  a  human  being 
as  you  and  I,"  and  superior  in  value  as  in  extent,  has  a  tendency 
to  displace  in  emphasis  the  remoter  Absolute.  In  particular, 
this  takes  the  form  of  an  exaltation  of  the  idea  of  "loyalty" 
as  the  supreme  ethical  value, — concretely,  a  loyalty  to  the  com- 
munity regarded  as  a  more  inclusive  Person,  but  sublimated  for 
philosophy  into  a  loyalty  to  the  spirit  of  loyalty  as  such. 
Waiving  the  doubtful  point  as  to  whether  it  is  possible  or  wise, 
either  theoretically  or  practically,  to  enlist  morality  so  strongly 
against  that  spirit  of  individual  liberty  which  claims  the  right 
to  keep  in  check  the  organized  power  of  society,  Royce's  doc- 
trine may  be  regarded  as  an  enforcement  of  one  moral  duty 
in  particular— the  cultivation  of  an  attitude  of  "good-will,"  as 
supplying  the  necessary  condition  on  which  the  solution  of 
most  concrete  moral  problems  is  dependent.  The  same  teach- 
ing underlies  Royce's  latest  formulation  of  his  metaphysics  in 


290        English  and  American  Philosophy 

the  theory  of  "mterpretation,"  with  God  as  the  Great  Inter- 
preter,— a  restatement  of  his  fundamental  absolutism  which 
is  rather  more  edifying  than  it  is  closely  reasoned. 

6.  Royce's  entire  philosophy  evidently  rests  upon  the  co- 
gency of  his  initial  argument  for  idealism.  The  point  of  the 
argument  is,  to  repeat,  that  neither  truth  nor  error  is  intelligible 
save  as  the  idea  which  has  a  meaning,  and  the  object  which  it 
means,  come  together  in  a  single  unity  of  experience,  where 
the  latter  is  seen  to  be  a  fulfilment  of  the  former.  And  the 
necessity  for  such  an  inclusive  consciousness  rests  mainly  upon 
two  points:  Royce  endeavors  to  show  that  the  ordinary  notion 
of  the  independence  of  the  object  of  knowledge  is  untenable, 
and  that  its  claims  are  satisfied,  and  better  satisfied,  by  a 
different  interpretation.  This  latter  argument  takes  its  start 
from  the  doctrine  that  had  become  a  commonplace  in  English 
empiricism.  If  we  have  made  up  our  minds  that  all  reality 
must  be  reduced  to  experience,  as  against  the  existence  of  an 
independent  world,  then  the  only  meaning  of  the  statement 
that  an  object  is  real  when  I  am  not  perceiving  it  is,  that  under 
such  and  such  conditions  the  experience  can  be  secured.  Such 
an  argument,  however,  gets  a  compelling  force  only  in  case 
we  have  already  given  up  any  faith  in  a  contemporaneous  ob- 
ject existing  when  it  is  not  perceived.  It  is  a  legitimate 
hypothesis,  and  may  turn  out  to  be  required  as  a  substi- 
tute for  our  first  belief;  but  it  is  an  hypothesis  which 
presupposes  the  bankruptcy  of  the  more  familiar  notion 
of  perceptual  knowledge.  Royce  introduces  it  with  a  clear 
recognition  of  its  hypothetical  nature;  but  as  he  goes  on  he 
insensibly  tends  to  drop  this  recognition,  and  to  take  it  as  the 
only  verifiable  interpretation,  ignoring  the  fact  that  at  least  it 
has  changed  essentially  the  original  situation  that  called  for 
explanation.  For  the  occurrence  of  a  future  experience — the 
only  thing  that  is  really  "verifiable" — is  distinctly  not  what 
we  ordinarily  think  of  when  we  talk  about  "objects."  It  is 
one  thing  to  mean  a  "real'^  object  now  existing,  and  quite  an- 


Josiah  Royce  291 

other  to  mean  a  sensation  or  perception  that  will  later  on 
exist;  we  have  knowledge  in  both  cases,  but  knowledge  of  two 
very  different  facts. 

The  departure  from  our  everyday  convictions  is  still  greater 
in  the  more  developed  form  of  Royce's  doctrine.  The  relation 
of  a  purpose  to  its  fulfilment  does  not  in  any  sense  represent 
our  first  understanding  of  what  is  intended  by  the  relation  of  an 
idea  to  its  object;  the  thing  which  we  suppose  ourselves  to 
know,  we  readily  distinguish  from  the  end  of  knowledge,  to 
which  end  it  stands  normally  as  a  condition  or  a  means.  A 
purpose  will  indeed  usually  be  present;  but  even  the  act  of 
attention  which  selects  the  object — itself  also  distinguishable 
from  the  object  it  selects — is  not  identical  with  this  purpose, 
but  rather  is  dependent  on  it.  This  empirical  difference  be- 
tween knowledge  and  the  end  it  serves,  it  is  almost  impossible 
to  overlook  where  overt  and  practical  purposes  are  concerned; 
and  it  holds  even  of  the  intellectual  purpose  in  the  narrow 
sense.  We  have,  to  be  sure,  a  desire  to  know,  which  is  satis- 
fied when  knowledge  is  attained ;  but  the  relation  between  this 
desire  and  its  satisfaction  is  not  the  relation  betw^een  the  idea 
and  the  object,  but  presupposes  already  the  object's  existence. 

The  h5rpothesis,  then,  can  plausibly  be  taken  as  established, 
only  in  case  we  have  first  gained  the  right  to  discard  the  more 
natural  belief,  as  Royce  indeed  is  ready  to  allow;  whenever 
the  failure  of  his  teleological  terms  to  satisfy  our  common  prej- 
udices becomes  too  apparent,  he  is  accustomed  to  call  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  the  only  alternative  lies  in  an  acceptance 
of  the  notion  of  independent  objects,  and  that  such  a  possibility 
has  already  been  excluded.  The  backbone  of  the  theory  is  thus 
the  refutation  of  realism;  but  this  refutation  turns  out  to  have 
peculiarities  which  limit  its  power  to  convince  the  realist  him- 
self. 

Royce  sets  out  by  defining  the  realistic  conception  of  reality 
as  the  total  absence  of  relations.^    Now  few  realists  will  recog- 

*  World  and  the  Individual,  First  Series,  Lecture  III. 


V 


292       English  and  American  Philosophy 

nize  this  as  their  intention;  when  it  is  said  that,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  object  exists  independently  of  its  being  known  by 
me,  it  is  scarcely  meant  that  such  independence  constitutes 
its  existence.  Its  existence  is  what  it  may  happen  to  be;  and 
its  independence — its  existential  independence — of  knowing 
is  only  one  consequence  of  this.  Nevertheless  the  entire  force  of 
Royce's  reasoning  depends  upon  thus  loading  the  dice  against 
independence  by  his  preliminary  definition.  Once  grant  that 
reality  is  definable  as  itself  nothing  but  a  total  absence  of  re- 
lations, and  it  is  no  hard  matter  to  show  the  suicidal  conse- 
quences. But  if  we  suppose,  as  of  course  we  must,  that  the 
existence  of  the  object  is  something  different  from  its  relation 
of  independence,  there  seems  no  reason  why  it  might  not  have 
this  relation,  and  other  relations  as  well,  without  ceasing  to 
be  existentially  other  than  an  experience  which  knows  it, 
unless,  that  is,  the  power  of  relations  to  be  real  outside  a  uni- 
tary mind  be  regarded  as  excluded;  and  while  this  may  per- 
haps be  the  case,  it  cannot  be  taken  for  granted  in  an  argu- 
ment intended  to  demonstrate  it.  When  realism  talks  of  an 
object  as  "wholly  other  than  ideas,"  it  does  not  need  to  mean 
that  ideal  characters  are  to  be  excluded  from  the  description 
of  the  object,  but  only  that  it  embodies  them  in  a  form  of 
existence  which  is  not  identical  with  their  existence  as  thoughts 
of  ours;  all  the  dialectical  difficulties  arise,  once  more,  from  the 
determination,  already  familiar  in  the  idealist,  to  absorb  ex- 
istence in  logic. 

7.  Meanwhile  positive  difficulties  are  not  lacking  in  the 
way  of  Royce's  theory.  For  one  thing,  it  does  not  seem  clear 
how  an  absolute  experience  is  going  after  all  to  save  the  de- 
ficiencies of  human  knowledge — the  knowledge  we  are  con- 
cerned primarily  to  explain.  Royce  insists  that  knowledge  im- 
plies the  recognition  of  a  "beyond,"  while  yet  it  has  no  meaning 
unless  this  transcendent  fact  is  already  in  the  possession  of  the 
self  that  knows  it.  But  if  the  self  that  gives  intelligibility  to 
knowledge  is  not  my  empirical  self,  but  one  of  which  my  em- 


Josiah  Royce  293 

pirical  experience  confessedly  falls  short,  what  light  does  it 
throw  upon  the  fact  of  human  knowing?  Royce  tells  us  that 
an  incomplete  idea,  a  single  judgment  uncorrected  by  a  wider 
one,  knows  only  its  incomplete  content,  about  which,  therefore, 
it  cannot  be  in  error;  when  John  judges  about  Thomas,  the 
judgment  is  not  about  the  real  Thomas,  but  about  John's  idea 
of  Thomas,  since  the  real  Thomas  never  becomes  any  part  of 
John's  thought  at  all.^  As  a  matter  of  fact  this  is  not  an  ac- 
curate account;  John's  judgment  is  not  about  his  idea  of 
Thomas,  but  his  idea — the  logical  content,  not  the  psychical 
phenomenon — is  precisely  what  he  judges  about  the  real 
Thomas.  But  if  we  do  adopt  Royce's  analysis  of  the  single 
judgment  as  a  starting  point,  it  seems  fatal  to  his  conclusion. 
For  if  the  object  of  my  judgment  is  in  reality  only  my  present 
content  or  idea,  then  /  cannot  mean  a  beyond.  A  larger  mind 
which  includes  my  idea  along  with  the  object  may  see  that 
the  latter  is  the  fulfilment  of  the  former;  but  if  meaning  is 
defined  in  terms  of  fulfilment,  I  in  my  finiteness  could  not 
have  the  sense  of  meaning  at  all. 

Once  grant,  meanwhile,  that  I  as  a  finite  being  may  know 
objects  beyond  myself,  not  by  including  them  in  my  own  ex- 
perience,— for  then  they  would  not  be  beyond  me, — but  by  ap- 
prehending their  logical  nature  or  essence,  and  Royce's  whole 
theory  of  error,  with  its  momentous  consequences,  falls  to  the 
ground.  For  the  recognition  of  an  error  it  may  well  be  that  we 
need  a  wider  judgment  which  shall  show  wherein  the  narrower 
judgment  is  at  fault.  But  this  only  says  that  error  is  not 
known  as  such  apart  from  wider  knowledge;  and  there  is  no 
need  that  the  conditions  that  lead  to  the  discovery  of  error 
should  constitute  the  nature  of  error  as  well.  This  wider  judg- 
ment does  not  make  it  necessary  that  the  realities  about  which 
we  judge  should  enter  into  a  single  consciousness.  It  is  enough 
that  we  should  be  able  to  compare  their  descriptive  content; 
and  the  two  descriptions  might  very  well  enter  into  a  unity  of 

^Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  pp.  405,  408  ff. 


294        English  and  American  Philosophy 

knowledge,  without  dragging  after  them  the  realities  whose 
nature  they  profess  to  describe.  Doubtless  in  some  sense  I 
must,  as  Royce  urges,  already  "possess"  an  object  in  order 
that  I  may  know  what  object  I  intend;  but  why  is  it  not 
enough  that  the  possession  should  be  the  ideal  possession  that 
knowledge  involves — the  presence  of  a  recognized  idea  or  con- 
tent referred  to  reality  at  a  point  at  which  I  come  into  practical 
contact  with  it  as  an  active  agent, — rather  than  the  actual  pos- 
session of  a  deeper  self  of  which  I  am  not  in  the  least  aware,  and 
other  than  the  finite  self  that  does,  for  our  human  experience, 
the  actual  knowing?  A  logic  which  leads  to  the  conclusion 
that  every  finite  act  of  knowing  is  a  knowledge  of  the  entire 
universe,  and  our  apparent  ignorance  only  an  inattention  to 
details,  calls  for  rigid  scrutiny  before  it  is  accepted/ 

And  in  particular  it  might  be  asked  how,  if  the  recognition 
of  error  presupposes  actual  as  distinct  from  logical  inclusiveness, 
I  ever  could  detect  an  error  held  by  another  man,  since  Royce 
allows  that  for  empirical  experience  the  two  selves  do  not  co- 
alesce. The  case  of  our  knowledge  of  other  selves  offers  indeed 
rather  special  difficulties.  The  objectivity  of  nature  means,  for 
Royce,  that  it  is  socialized,  communicable,  categorized  knowl- 
edge— ^what  he  calls  a  "world  of  description";  it  is  knowledge 
content  which  is  held  in  common,  and  so  it  presupposes  already 
an  acquaintance  with  other  selves.  And  unless  parts  of  our 
experience  come  to  us  merely  labelled  "social,"  leaving  us  to 
find  out  by  inference  what  this  means,  it  would  appear  accord- 
ingly that  this  logically  prior  knowledge  must  bring  us  into 
actual  contact  with  the  inner  life  of  purpose  and  appreciation 
in  our  fellows.  But  the  mechanism  for  this,  obscure  at  best, 
Royce  makes  doubly  hard  to  understand  by  distinguishing  im- 
mediate "appreciation"  as  lacking  in  those  categorized  qualities 
that  constitute  the  world  of  "description";  and  consequently  he 
is  found  maintaining  both  that  social  experience  must  be  pre- 
supposed before  experience  of  the  world  of  nature  is  intelligible, 

*  World  and  the  Individual,  Second  Series,  p.  57. 


Josiah  Royce  295 

and  yet  that  the  object  of  social  experience  is  an  appreciation 
which  is  private  and  incommunicable.  Royce  imagines  indeed 
the  possibility  of  a  sort  of  experience  such  that  my  neighbor's 
mind  might  be  shared  by  me,  and  so  laid  immediately  and 
telepathically  open  to  my  inspection.^  But  it  is  the  Absolute, 
again,  who  alone  enjoys  this  insight;  and  our  possibilities  of 
knowledge  are  consequently  still  left  unexplained. 

8.  One  further  logical  difficulty  may  be  noted  briefly. 
Royce  insists  repeatedly, — this  is  essential  indeed  for  his  treat- 
ment of  ethics  and  religion, — that  every  last  detail  of  our  finite 
experience  is  present  just  as  it  is,  though  of  coiu-se  illuminated 
by  a  wider  context,  in  God's  life,  in  the  same  way  in  which 
sensational  elements  enter  into  the  unity  of  experience  we  call 
ours.  There  is,  however,  one  feature  of  finite  experience  where 
this  becomes  an  apparent  contradiction — the  conscious  sense  of 
finiteness  and  limitation  itself.  A  part  can  be  a  mere  identical 
part  of  a  whole,  only  so  long  as  it  does  not  recognize  or  feel  it- 
self as  such  a  part;  this  sense  of  limitation  cannot  also  be  pres- 
ent unchanged  in  a  whole  for  which  the  limitation  has  ceased  to 
exist.  The  analogy  breaks  down  because  the  elements  in  ex- 
perience for  us  do  not  have  this  realization  of  their  own  sepa- 
rateness,  or  the  peculiar  emotional  attitudes  that  go  along  with 
it.  To  appeal  to  our  ability,  for  example,  to  appreciate  the 
force  of  an  argument  while  yet  we  see  its  limitations,  is  not  to 
the  point ;  what  we  need  to  suppose  is,  that  one  can  at  the  same 
moment  believe  something  to  be  a  truth  which  nevertheless  is 
seen  to  be  in  error.  And  since  I  do  believe  many  things  that 
are  erroneous,  these  experiences  just  as  they  are  for  me  seem  ex- 
cluded from  the  life  of  an  omniscient  God.  One  thing  that  helps 
Royce  to  overlook  this  difficulty  of  getting  the  finite  bodily  in- 
side the  Absolute,  is  the  rather  surprising  absence,  in  his  anal- 
ysis, of  any  adequate  recognition  of  "feeling"  in  experience,  as 
distinct  from  thought  and  will;  for  it  is  the  peculiar  felt  char- 
acter of  our  existence  that  occasions  most  of  the  difficulty,  and 
^Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  pp.  395  f. 


296        English  and  American  Philosophy 

this  character  naturally  is  lost  when  we  translate  reality  into 
terms  of  thought  or  knowledge.  And  the  same  deficiency  leaves 
Royce's  whole  doctrine  of  the  individual  moving  after  all  in  the 
region  of  abstractions.  If  individuation  is  due  simply  to  an 
act  of  voluntary  attention  to  one  system  of  ideas,  at  best  all  that 
we  have  done  is  to  give  a  preferential  position  in  the  mind  to 
what  are  still  ideas,  or  logical  facts.  The  notion  of  purpose 
seems  indeed  at  first  sight  to  bring  us  closer  to  the  actual  world. 
But  the  more  we  insist  that  thought  and  purposive  action  are 
identical,  the  more  we  are  left  with  a  purpose  that  consists  only 
in  the  movement  of  ideas, — a  "movement"  still  further  with- 
drawn from  the  world  in  which  purpose  gets  its  significance  for 
man,  by  the  fact  that  this  thought  is  at  the  same  time  eternally 
complete. 

9.  The  criticism  in  the  last  paragraph  touches  another,  and 
particularly  vital  point  in  Royce's  philosophy.  From  the  time 
of  the  publication  of  the  Conception  of  God,  a  large  share  of 
his  energy  went  toward  counteracting  the  charge  that  his  ab- 
solutism is  fatal  to  human  freedom  and  responsibility,  and 
so  cuts  at  the  root  of  the  ethical  life.  Royce  exercises  all 
his  ingenuity  to  escape  from  this  entanglement.  But  the  same 
difficulty  appears  here  as  before,  and  in  an  aggravated  form; 
the  analogy  with  the  sort  of  fact  to  which  alone  we  can  ap- 
peal, fails  in  an  essential  feature.  The  union  of  a  multitude  of 
individual  wills  in  the  divine  will  can  only  be  approached  in 
terms  of  the  union  of  various  impulses  in  the  finite  life.  But 
the  significant  difference  is,  that  the  impulse  does  not  as  such 
recognize  itself  as  having  a  particular  aim  to  which  others  are 
external;  an  impulse  is  only  an  impulse  in  a  self,  and  is  not 
an  /.  Metaphorically  it  may  be  said  sometimes  to  take  the 
reins  in  its  own  hands,  and  aim  at  its  own  satisfaction.  But  for 
the  strict  point  at  issue  this  is  nothing  but  a  metaphor;  and  in 
any  case  such  a  thing  can  only  happen  as  life  is  disorganized, 
which  God's  life  presumably  is  not.  In  so  far  then  as  we  are 
genuine  selves,  there  is  but  a  single  will  that  operates  in  us. 


Josiah  Royce  2gy 

though  there  are  many  interests;  and  accordingly  the  concep- 
tion of  an  Absolute  which  includes  a  number  of  wills,  and  allows 
each  a  degree  of  freedom  undetermined  by  other  wills,  or  by 
the  whole  purpose  to  which  they  contribute,  is  strictly  unthink- 
able, if  we  demand  for  our  conceptions,  as  Royce  rightly  does, 
a  ground  in  experience.  It  is  significant  that  when  Royce 
comes  closest  to  grips  with  the  metaphysical  difficulties  of  his 
conception,  he  is  forced  after  all  to  leave  the  world  of  concrete 
experience,  and  to  resort  to  highly  abstract  and  technical  logical 
devices,  where  the  infinite  riches  of  the  spiritual  life  pass  into 
the  infinite  monotony  of  a  "self-representative  system." 


§  6.     The  Idealistic  School.    McTaggart.    Howison.    Hocking. 
Laurie.    Seth  Pringle-Pattison 

I.  Among  the  numerous  adherents  of  the  idealistic  move* 
ment  who  call  for  briefer  mention,  the  majority  keep  fairly 
closely  to  the  lines  marked  out  by  Green  and  the  Cairds.  Here 
belong  the  names  of  William  Wallace,  the  translator  and  inter- 
preter of  Hegel,  William  Leonard  Courtney,  Richard  Lewis 
Nettleship,  Robert  Adamson  (in  his  earlier  writings),  John 
Watson,  D.  G.  Ritchie,  Henry  Jones,  J.  S.  Mackenzie,  J.  H. 
Muirhead,  R.  B.  Haldane,  C.  C.  J.  Webb,  and  others.  A  rela- 
tively more  independent  rendering  of  Hegel  is  to  be  found  in 
J.  D.  Baillie.  Baillie  is  acutely  conscious  of  the  dualisms  that 
still  persist  even  in  the  attempted  correction  of  Kant  by  Green 
and  his  followers;  and  this  incomplete  idealism  he  traces  to  a 
failure  to  realize  that  perception,  understanding,  reason, 
morality,  religion,  are  not  independent  functions  or  co-existing 
departments  of  mind,  but  different  levels  in  the  life  of  spirit  in 
each  of  which  a  single  principle  is  expressing  itself;  each  has 
its  own  worth  therefore,  and  none,  not  even  the  highest,  can 
take  the  place  of  the  rest.  The  business  of  philosophy  is  to 
explain  them  by  showing  their  necessary  place  in  the  continuous 


298        English  and  American  Philosophy 

development  of  the  one  spiritual  life,  through  their  varying 
degrees  of  approximation  to  the  whole.  Meanwhile  however 
the  old  difficulties  about  the  relation  of  this  seemingly  psycho- 
logical conception  of  "experience"  to  the  individual  human  life, 
and  of  its  "development"  to  the  reality  of  time  and  to  the  unity 
of  the  Absolute,  are  still  left  very  obscure.  Somewhat  outside 
the  ranks  of  the  professional  philosophers  are  to  be  noted  also 
May  Sinclair,  whose  spirited  and  readable  Defense  of  Idealism 
seems  specially  influenced  by  Green;  and  E.  Belford  Bax, 
whose  insistence  on  an  "alogical"  element  in  reality  tends  to 
bring  in  by  the  back  door  motives  not  altogether  consistent 
with  his  absolutism. 

2.  In  America  also,  German  philosophy,  first  seriously  ex- 
ploited by  W.  T.  Harris  and  his  organ  the  Journal  of  Specu- 
lative Philosophy,  quickly  displaced  the  older  Scottish  phi- 
losophy in  the  colleges.  Here  the  influence  of  Royce  is  nat- 
urally apparent,  while  in  recent  years  that  of  Bosanquet  has 
been  on  the  increase,  very  largely  through  the  teaching  activities 
of  *J.  E.  Creighton  in  the  Sage  School  of  Philosophy  at  Cornell 
University.  Bosanquet's  influence  is  conspicuous  also  in  R.  F. 
i  H.  Hoernle.  Mary  Whiton  Calkins  is  perhaps  the  most 
prominent  disciple  of  Royce.  A  free  and  relatively  independent 
recent  rendering  of  the  idealistic  tradition  is  George  P.  Adams' 
Idealism  and  the  Modern  Age,  which  attempts,  as  against  the 
pragmatic  and  naturalistic  reduction  of  knowledge  to  a  bio- 
logical control  value,  to  vindicate  the  validity  of  the  mind's 
attachment  to  objective  "ideal  structures,"  that  call  for  recog- 
nition, knowledge,  and  love,  rather  than  for  mastery.  Another 
and  voluntaristic  idealism  of  the  Fichtean  type  is  represented 
in  Hugo  Miinsterberg,  whose  long  residence  in  America,  and 
a  certain  influence  he  exerted  on  American  thinking,  should 
perhaps  give  him  a  place  in  this  account,  though  his  intellectual 
affiliations  are  with  Germany.  Miinsterberg  divides  sharply  the 
over-causal  and  over-individual  real  world  of  appreciation  and 
purpose,  as  a  world  of  pure  will-acts  to  be  interpreted  rather 


Hugo  Munsterberg  299 

than  explained,  from  the  phenomenal  universe  of  science,  where 
values  are  displaced  by  a  mechanical  nexus;  and  he  endeavors 
by  a  brilliant  tour  de  force  to  organize  the  world  of  absolute 
values — it  appears  that  there  are  twenty-four  of  them — in 
terms  of  their  necessary  implication  in  the  original  will-act.  It 
is  this  last  that  creates  for  us  a  permanent  world  out  of  a  flux 
of  passing  experience,  by  the  one  fundamental  deed  of  seeking 
identities,  in  which  we  find  an  absolute  satisfaction  that  has 
no  reference  to  pleasure,  but  rests  only  on  the  demand  which 
the  will  makes  for  self-consistency. 

3.  The  direct  influence  of  Bradley  has  been  less  in  evidence 
in  America.  Among  English  philosophers,  A.  E.  Taylor  and 
Harold  Joachim  are  probably  to  be  classed  as  his  followers, 
though  the  former  is  hospitable  to  many  other  motives  also, 
in  particular  to  the  voluntarism  of  Royce.  Joachim's  Mean- 
ing of  Truth  is  noteworthy  for  its  candid  recognition  of  cer- 
tain ultimate  difficulties  in  the  idealistic  theory  of  "coherence" 
which  have  not  been  hidden  from  hostile  critics,  but  which  the 
idealists  themselves  have  seldom  fairly  faced.  The  systematic 
knowledge  which  human  minds  possess  is  not,  Joachim  recog- 
nizes, even  at  its  best,  that  living  organism  of  Reason  as  a 
significant  whole  which  the  coherence  theory  of  truth  demands, 
but  only,  after  all,  a  more  or  less  logically  complete  descrip- 
tion set  over  against  a  reality  to  be  known — an  ideal  "what" 
divorced  from  existence;  and  therefore  inevitably  it  after  all 
suggests  "correspondence,"  in  some  form,  as  the  standard  of 
its  truth.  And  until  it  can  be  seen,  as  no  philosopher  now  pre- 
tends to  see,  how  reality  requires  as  a  necessary  moment  in  its 
self-maintenance  an  arrest  that  issues  in  finite  duplications  of 
itself — modes  which  may  even  set  themselves  in  that  subbom 
assertion  of  their  own  completeness  which  is  the  essence  of  error 
in  its  full  discordance, — and  how  truth  for  us  comes  to  take 
the  form  of  a  "wandering  adjective"  in  correspondence  with  a 
reality  to  be  known,  we  are  involved  in  fundamental  contra- 
dictions; our  theory  makes  certain  demands  which  both  must 


300        English  and  American  Philosophy 

be,  and  cannot  be,  met.  While  however  Joachim  thus  allows 
that  if  the  coherence  notion  of  truth  be  sound,  no  theory  of  co- 
herence can  itself  be  completely  true,  he  does  not  consider  the 
possibility  that  it  ought  to  be  abandoned. 

4.  There  remains  one  fairly  distinct  group  among  recent 
idealists,  distinguished  by  a  common  purpose  to  give  back 
to  the  "self,"  in  one  fashion  or  another,  a  place  in  the  system 
of  reality  from  which  Hegel's  influence  was  always  tending  to 
dislodge  it.  In  most  cases  this  grows  out  of  an  ethical  and 
religious  interest ;  in  John  Ellis  McTaggart,  however,  the  motive 
is  primarily  logical  and  metaphysical.  McTaggart  is  the  most 
striking  and  incisive  of  the  English  commentators  on  Hegel,  by 
virtue  of  a  logical  clear-headedness  which  demands  a  single  pre- 
cise meaning  to  every  statement;  and  while  it  is  not  certain 
that  Hegel  himself  is  always  most  adequately  represented  when 
too  much  light  is  thrown  upon  his  more  cryptic  utterances,  the 
result  is  at  any  rate  in  the  interests  of  straightforwardness,  if 
not  of  spiritual  edification. 

McTaggart 's  interpretation  of  the  dialectic  abandons  all  at- 
tempt to  identify  the  process  of  thought  with  that  of  reality, 
and  looks  upon  it  as  the  search  by  a  finite  mind  for  an  adequate 
and  consistent  concept  to  cover  the  experienced  facts, — a  proc- 
ess which  moves  by  correcting  abstract  and  partial  interpreta- 
tions through  a  reference  to  the  fuller  reality  that  any  bit  of 
experience  will  reveal  when  its  implicit  structure  is  worked 
out.  A  certain  lack  of  spiritual  affinity  here  with  the  more 
orthodox  forms  of  idealism  is  emphasized  by  the  sympathetic 
treatment  of  hedonism,  and  the  defence  of  individualism 
against  an  "organic"  theory  of  society.  McTaggart's  central 
doctrine  is  that  of  the  ultimatenes*  of  finite  selves,  and  the 
consequent  need  for  conceiving  reality  as  a  unity  of  system,  and 
not  of  self-consciousness.  The  clue  to  the  final  nature  of  the 
Absolute  is  found  in  the  social  experience.  Here,  in  the  self  as 
member  of  a  society  of  selves,  we  have  the  recognition  of  an 
objective  unity  which  itself  is  inwardly  unified,  a  part  which 


/.  M.  E,  McTaggart  301 

contains  the  whole  of  which  it  is  a  part,  since  the  unity  is  not 
only  m,  but  jor,  the  consciousness  of  each  of  the  individuals. 
Accordingly  we  are  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  it  is  the 
eternal  nature  of  Spirit  to  be  differentiated  into  finite  spirits, 
since  an  undifferentiated  unity  would  not  exist,  and  no  other 
differentiations  have  vitality  to  stand  against  a  perfect  unity. 
In  calling  this  conception  atheistic,  McTaggart  means  primarily 
to  deny  personality  to  existence  as  a  whole;  for  what  we  know 
as  personality,  a  consciousness  of  the  non-ego  is  essential,  and 
such  a  consciousness  the  Absolute  cannot  possess,  since  there  is 
nothing  outside  it  from  which  it  can  distinguish  itself.  But  he 
equally  rejects  the  supposition  that  in  this  society  of  selves 
there  may  exist  one  supreme  personality;  though  so  long  as  we 
distinguish  this  as  finite  from  the  whole  of  things, — and  it  is  in 
this  way  that  religion  commonly  conceives  of  God, — ^it  stands 
on  a  different  footing  logically  from  an  Absolute  self. 

The  acceptance  of  the  reality  of  the  finite  relieves  McTag- 
gart^s  system  of  certain  of  the  difficulties  that  confront  other 
types  of  absolutism.  This  however  is  counterbalanced  by  the 
intrusion  of  the  further,  and  unsolved,  problem  of  time  and 
change.  In  general,  the  empirical  plausibility  of  many  of  Mc- 
Taggart's  arguments  implies  the  temporal  self  in  the  ordinary 
human  sense.  But  the  dialectic  points  rather  to  a  "perfect 
and  timeless"  being,  if  the  self  is  to  be  brought  into  connection 
with  a  consistent  and  harmonious  whole;  and  the  final  puzzle  as 
to  how  a  system  of  eternal  selves  can  give  rise  to  the  appearance 
of  imperfect  selves  developing  in  time,  is  frankly  given  up, 
though  a  number  of  the  difficulties  in  detail  which  philosophy 
has  to  meet  are  solved  by  using  the  distinction.  It  probably 
is  intended  as  a  partial  justification  of  this  logical  complaisance 
that  knowledge  itself  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  ultimate.  In 
the  eternal  world,  both  cognition  and  volition  tend  to  disap- 
pear from  the  content  of  reality,  to  be  replaced  by  the  emotion 
of  love,  as  that  form  of  human  experience  which  most  ade- 
quately embodies  the  demand  for  a  perfect  unity  of  self  and 


302        English  and  American  Philosophy 

other-self,  along  with  a  perfect  discrimination  of  the  one  from 
the  other.  And  it  may  be  granted  that,  as  an  experience,  love 
does  seem  somewhat  less  repugnant  to  timelessness;  though 
the  need  of  appealing  to  a  self  whose  nature  consists  in  a  bound- 
less love  for  all  other  selves  is  hardly  calculated  to  make  more 
evident  the  identity  of  the  timeless  and  perfect  world  with  the 
one  we  actually  know. 

Meanwhile  it  might  seem  that  there  are  objections  to  the 
claim  that  the  demands  of  the  Absolute  Idea — which  requires 
that  the  whole  nature  of  the  social  unity  should  consist  in  the 
fact  that  it  is  for  the  individuals,  and  the  whole  nature  of  the 
individuals  in  the  fact  that  the  unity  is  for  them  ^ — are  fulfilled 
cognitively  in  a  community  of  selves.  If  we  allow,  as  Mc- 
Taggart  seems  to  do,^  that  concretely  the  cognitive  unity  in  the 
self  which  knows  the  world  system,  and  the  unity  of  the  system 
which  each  self  knows,  are  unities  in  different  senses,  can  we 
really  say  that  the  whole  nature  of  the  social  unity  consists  in 
the  fact  that  it  is  for  the  individuals?  The  community  does 
indeed  depend  upon  an  inner  recognition  of  its  unity  by  the 
individual  members,  for  apart  from  its  being  recognized  in 
consciousness,  the  social  relation  would  be  meaningless.  But 
still  some  basis  for  the  social  system  must  have  reality  outside 
any  possible  consciousness  or  knowledge  of  it  by  finite  spirits 
— else  this  knowledge  of  theirs  would  not  be  true  knowledge; 
and  if  so,  we  lose  the  right  to  say  that  it  has  no  nature  except 
for  the  individuals.  If  the  individuals  in  their  proper  character 
did  not  exist,  there  could  be  no  relationship  between  them,  as 
there  would  be  no  difference  between  sweet  and  sour  were  not 
the  qualities  themselves  first  presupposed ;  but  the  relationship 
is  not  jor  the  individuals  in  the  sense  of  being  only  a  term 
within  their  consciousness,  any  more  than  the  relation  of  differ- 
ence is  only  inside  the  related  terms.  And  this  implies  that,  on 
the  other  hand,  we  cannot  say  that  the  individual's  conscious 

*  Studies  in  Hegelian  Cosmology,  pp.  lo  ff,  59  ff. 
'Ibid.,  pp.  14,  25,  62. 


/.  M.  E.  McTaggart  303 

recognition  of  his  harmony  with  others  itself  constitutes  the 
separate  nature  of  each  individual ;  things  which  in  themselves 
are  nothing  cannot  produce  a  world  by  coming  into  relation. 
The  abstract  logical  content  of  the  cognition  of  the  social  sys- 
tem may  be — logically — identical  with  the  system  that  is 
known;  but  the  concrete  self,  or  the  concrete  experience  of 
knowing,  is  not  reducible  to  mere  logical  content. 

The  only  way  of  escaping  the  difficulty  seems  to  be  by  giving 
up  the  notion  of  existence  altogether,  and  keeping  entirely  to 
a  logical  analysis  of  the  "social"  as  a  concept  simply,  with- 
out reference  to  its  existential  implications.  Then  we  could 
doubtless  say,  once  more,  that  the  relation  of  selves  would  not 
be  that  particular  thing,  a  social  imity,  were  it  not  for  what 
goes  on  within  the  consciousness  of  each  individual  self.  Simi- 
larly the  individual  might  be  said  to  have  its  social  meaning, 
as  distinct  from  its  existence,  only  in  terms  of  its  relationships 
to  other  individuals.  But  unless  social  unity  is  to  hang  in  the 
air,  it  must  find  a  basis  in  realities;  and  these  are  bound  to 
have  a  nature,  and  relationships,  which  the  cognitive  unity  of 
any  single  self  does  not  constitute,  but  has  to  recognize  for 
what  they  are. 

5.  A  philosophy  which  also  interprets  the  Absolute  as  a 
community  rather  than  as  a  single  self,  but  which  differs  alike 
in  its  motivation,  in  the  thoroughgoing  transcendentalism  of 
its  method,  and,  in  terms  of  content,  in  the  enlargement  of  the 
spiritual  community  to  include  a  perfect  self,  or  God,  is  to 
be  found,  somewhat  sketchily  developed,  in  the  American  phi- 
losopher G.  H.  Howison.  Howison  is  impressed  by  the  danger 
which  monism  threatens  to  the  integrity  of  ethical  freedom  and 
responsibility;  and  it  is  to  save  these  that  he  sets  out  to  de- 
velop, on  a  Kantian  basis,  an  idealistic  pluralism.  Howison 
accepts  the  reduction  of  all  existence  to  minds  on  the  one  hand, 
and,  on  the  other,  to  the  items  and  order  of  their  experiences. 
These  phenomenal  experiences,  as  organized  by  the  active  forms 
of  consciousness,  are  what  we  call  the  physical  world  of  nature, 


304       English  and  American  Philosophy 

whose  objectivity,  therefore,  is  not  substantive,  but  social — 
the  reference  to  the  universal  society  of  minds  as  a  standard. 
Meanwhile  through  the  recognition  by  these  selves  of  one  an- 
other in  their  true  or  noumenal  being,  as  ultimate  and  self- 
determining,  their  coexistence  constitutes  a  moral  order  more 
fundamental  than  the  physical, — an  eternal  City  of  God, 
wherein  all  the  members  have  the  equality  belonging  to  their 
common  aim  of  fulfilling  one  rational  ideal.  In  this  community, 
however,  one  larger  Self  stands  out  as  the  fulfilled  type  of  every 
mind,  the  eternal  perfection  of  the  rational  nature  which  is 
common  to  all, — a  perfection  made  possible  because  in  him 
alone  there  is  lacking  the  material  of  sense  that  separates  finite 
selves  from  the  ideal,  and  renders  necessary  the  experience  of 
striving,  out  of  which  the  phenomenal  world,  where  evolution 
and  causality  rule,  arises.  And  by  this  character  which  he 
possesses,  God  constitutes  also  the  living  bond  of  the  union 
of  finite  selves,  not  as  a  creator, — no  member  of  the  eternal 
republic  has  any  origin  in  time,  and  the  category  of  efficient 
causation  applies  only  to  phenomena, — but  as  the  Ideal  which 
moves  through  its  attractiveness.  God  rules  not  by  the  exer- 
cise of  power  but  solely  by  light,  not  by  authority  but  by  rea- 
son, not  by  efficient  but  by  final  causation.  And  through  this 
dependence  of  the  causal  on  the  moral  world,  the  barrier  left 
by  Kant  between  the  practical  and  the  theoretical  reason  is 
broken  down.  Our  ethical  intuition  is  raised  from  the  realm 
of  feeling  to  that  of  intelligence;  and  the  ethical  first  principle 
is  shown  to  be  not  only  itself  an  act  of  knowledge,  but  the 
principle  of  all  knowledge,  since  it  is  through  this  ideal  implied 
in  a  society  of  free  beings  that  the  world  of  perceptions  is 
organized,  and  real  experience  separated  from  illusion. 

6.  A  similar  interest  in  the  integrity  of  the  self,  though 
the  speculative  emphasis  is  differently  placed,  is  also  visible  in 
a  new  turn  recently  given  to  the  idealistic  argument  by  W. 
E.  Hocking.  Notwithstanding  a  strong  sympathy  with  mysti- 
cism, Hocking's  interpretation  of  the  religious  experience  has 


W,  E,  Hocking  305 

a  definitely  realistic  tone.  The  need  is  recognized  explicitly 
for  an  outlying  and  creative  reality,  beyond  the  bounds  of  the 
self,  as  a  requirement  of  worship,  as  well  as,  more  incidentally, 
for  free  creative  activity  on  the  part  of  the  finite  person;  in- 
deed at  times  the  notion  of  the  Absolute  seems  to  be  no  more 
than  an  assertion  of  the  presence  of  absolute  validity  in  knowl- 
edge,^ and  to  leave  us  within  the  precincts  of  a  dualistic  theism. 
The  central  argument  of  the  book,  however,  is  plainly  a  variant 
of  the  idealistic  tradition.  It  is  to  the  effect  that  God  is  known 
by  man  directly  in  immediate  sense  experience.  The  argu- 
ment involves  two  theses  in  particular, — that  sense  experience 
is  a  common  ingredient  in  the  lives  of  different  selves,  which 
literally  coalesce  in  Nature,  and  that  a  necessary  aspect  of 
our  nature  experience  is  the  concurrent  recognition  of 
Other  Mind  as  also  knowing  the  same  content.  And 
since  this  Other  Mind  cannot  be  that  of  my  human  fel- 
lows, whom  I  recognize  as,  equally  with  myself,  depend- 
ent upon  nature,  which  does  not  have  to  wait  for  their 
knowing  in  order  to  exist,  we  are  forced  to  identify  it  with  God 
as  the  xmiversal  Knower  implicated  in  all  objective  knowledge. 
We  thus  know  even  our  fellow  beings  only  because  we  first 
know  God,  since  the  knowledge  of  God  supplies  the  whole  no- 
tion of  "social"  experience  without  whose  prior  possession  our 
inferential  recognition  of  human  selves  would  be  impossible. 

The  first  point  here  has  in  certain  ways  a  real  advantage  over 
the  more  usual  doctrine  of  the  idealists,  for  which  "nature"  is 
an  ideal  construction  by  means  of  which  various  selves,  in 
possession  of  experience  essentially  private,  are  able  to  com- 
mimicate  with  one  another;  for  if  there  is  an  actual  identity  of 
sense  perception,  we  have  a  bridge  for  passing  from  self  to  self 
which  the  mere  logical  sameness  of  an  ideal  content  fails  in 
any  obvious  way  to  supply.  It  is  true  this  makes  a  very  doubt- 
ful assumption  when  it  supposes  that  the  primary  object  of 
knowledge  is  the  sense  experience  itself;  this  is  the  original 
*  Meming  of  God  in  Human  Experience,  pp.  191,  204. 


3o6       English  and  American  Philosophy 

vice  of  subjectivism,  and  once  in  its  toils,  no  way  has  ever  yet 
been  found  that  will  quite  enable  us  to  escape.  It  is  the  other 
part  of  the  argument,  however,  that  calls  for  special  attention. 
The  idea  of  an  Other  Mind,  it  is  urged,  must  be  at  the  same 
time  an  experience  of  Other  Mind,  and  carry  existence  with  it, 
for  the  reason  that  if  it  were  a  mere  idea,  there  would  be  no 
standard  by  reference  to  which  it  could  be  thus  recognized; 
even  the  idea  of  a  social  experience  would  not  be  possible,  were 
such  an  experience  not  at  the  same  time  actual.^ 

Now  it  is  possible  to  see  how  this  might  be  a  valid  argument, 
provided  we  first  accept  the  reduction  of  the  concept  of  "ob- 
jectivity" to  social  agreement.  We  cannot  really  doubt  the 
objectivity  of  knowledge;  and  if,  accordingly,  the  objective  is 
definable  in  social  terms,  if  it  means  only  that  which  other 
minds  agree  with  us  in  knowing,  then  the  recognition  of  the 
social,  to  be  possible  in  idea  even,  must  apparently  be  a  primi- 
tive datum  of  experience,  since,  as  all  philosophy  goes  to  show, 
we  cannot  achieve  the  objective  by  starting  from  pure  sub- 
jectivity. We  could,  then,  have  no  world  at  all  apart  from  the 
sense  of  not  being  alone  in  knowing  this  world,  and  God,  as 
the  perpetual  "sustainer  of  universality"  in  our  judgments, 
must  be  somehow  present  in  experience  from  the  beginning.^ 
This  however  is  only  a  dialectical  triumph  unless  it  can  pre- 
suppose an  acceptance  of  the  original  definition;  and  the 
necessity  for  this  has  already  been  seen  to  be  debatable.  If 
we  allow  it  possible  that  the  object  of  perception  may  exist  in- 
dependently of  my  knowing  it,  rather  than  as  an  element  of 
experienced  content,  there  is  no  reason  why  I  might  not  start 
with  a  solitary  recognition  of  this  object  as  my  nature  experi- 
ence, or  why  the  "sense  of  reality"  might  not  arise  from  an 
active  commerce  with  a  physical  environment,  rather  than  from 
an  intellectual  perception  of  "shared"  ideas.  It  may  very  well 
be  that  I  carry  over  to  the  natural  agent  from  the  start  some 
of  the  characteristics  that  later  are  distinguished  as  belonging 
^Ibid.,  pp.  274  ff.  ^Ibid.,  pp.  281,  288. 


W,  E.  Hocking  307 

to  a  self;  but  this  is  very  different  from  viewing  it  as  known  by 
a  self,  and  only  thus  as  getting  objectified  at  all. 

In  a  sense  it  may  still  be  admitted  that  we  must  first  have 
something  that  can  be  called  a  social  experience  before  we  can 
reproduce  it  in  idea;  but  we  cannot  assume  by  definition  that 
a  social  experience  is  bound  to  include  the  actual  experienced 
presence  of  a  further  self.  We  have  to  look  to  the  facts  to 
see  what  it  actually  does  mean;  and  what  the  facts  seem  to 
suggest  is,  simply,  the  cognitive  acceptance  of  a  socius  not 
directly  experienced,  but  only  implied  in  ideal  terms.  And 
this  calls  attention  to  a  point  of  difficulty  in  Hocking's  posi- 
tion; even  supposing  his  argument  for  a  fellow-Knower  to  be 
allowed,  the  justification  nevertheless  is  doubtful  for  talking 
of  an  "experience"  of  this  Other  Mind.  Granting  the  existence 
of  a  communistic  society  which  has  a  common  property  in  sense 
experiences,  still  the  essential  Self,  the  living  center,  that  which 
knows,  is  something  other  than  its  possessions,  and  exercises 
an  activity  which  at  best  enters  into  my  life  only  in  the  shape 
of  its  results.  And  there  seems  no  more  possibility  therefore 
of  my  "experiencing"  in  an  immediate  way  another  self  in  the 
case  of  God, — though  I  might  have  experiences  that  lead  to  a 
direct  recognition  or  idea  of  him  without  the  use  of  conscious 
inference, — than  in  the  case  of  the  human  selves  where  it  is 
explicitly  denied,  unless  indeed  the  fact  be  that  I  myself  create 
both  myself  and  nature  through  a  mystical  identification  with 
the  creative  thought  of  God.  And  then  that  integrity  of  the 
self  which  Hocking  wishes  to  maintain  would  disappear. 

7.  What  Hocking  calls  a  Social  Realism,  with  an  absolutis- 
tic  background,  has  two  further  representatives  of  importance, 
whose  philosophical  results  are  rather  closely  identified.  Tech- 
nically there  might  be  some  objection  to  dealing  with  the  first 
of  these  in  connection  with  the  German  influence.  In  episte- 
mology,  Simon  S.  Laurie  seems  at  first  sight  to  belong  to  the 
tradition  of  Scottish  dualism,  and  his  earliest  book,  Meta- 
physica  Nova  et  Vetusta,  is  expressly  a  defence  of  "natural 


3o8        English  and  American  Philosophy 

realism."  Even  in  the  lower  levels  (Si  experience, — in  sensa- 
tion, and  in  that  synoptic  grouping  of  sense  impressions  which 
he  distinguishes  by  the  name  of  Attuition, — ^Laurie  finds  an 
implicit  dualism  of  feeling  and  felt  Other;  there  is  a  dim 
awareness  of  the  presence  of  actual  Being,  different  from  any 
possible  logical  predicate.  The  objective  categories  already 
implicitly  present  in  attuited  objects  are  not  therefore,  as  in 
Kant,  to  be  regarded  as  furnished  by  the  subject;  they  are 
found  in,  not  imposed  on,  phenomena.  There  is  no  good  ground 
for  doubting  that  we  are  here  brought  into  contact  with  the 
real  structure  of  things;  why  should  we  not  accept  the  testi- 
mony of  experience,  rather  than  put  it  on  the  defensive?  The 
burden  of  proof  lies  with  him  who  would  question  this;  we  are 
entitled  to  start  with  the  assumption  of  a  harmony  between 
the  conscious  and  the  non-conscious,  since  it  is  absurd  to  sup- 
pose that  the  scheme  of  creation  turns  out  to  be  a  fiasco  just 
when  it  reaches  its  highest  stage  in  finite  reason. 

These  categories  begin  to  be  explicit  in  Perception,  which 
is  the  elementary  form  of  Reason.  The  essence  of  Reason 
is  active  Will,  of  which  the  categories  are  the  "form."  While 
in  sensation  the  Object  seizes  the  Subject  as  it  were,  and  con- 
sciousness is  relatively  passive,  in  Reason  the  Subject  itself 
goes  out  and  seizes  the  sensed  Object.  And  in  this  way  it 
effects  knowledge  in  the  distinctive  sense,  through  an  act  of 
affirmation,  or  judgment  of  identity,  which  arrests  the  flux 
of  phenomena  through  the  conscious  discrimination  of  the 
original  felt  datum  as  not  other  things  but  just  itself,  and  so 
turns  it  into  a  more  or  less  permanent  object  of  consciousness. 
At  the  same  time  it  makes  explicit  the  Subject  also,  which  be- 
fore was  likewise  only  felt,  and  relates  the  object  to  the  unity 
of  the  conscious  self.  Rational  Judgment  is  the  explicit  enun- 
ciation of  this  original  act  which  constitutes  Perception,  and 
of  the  categories  which  it  involves.  It  is  the  distinctive  work 
of  Reason,  no  longer  simply  accepting  the  collocations  and 
sequences  of  the  animal  experience,  to  pass,  through  analysis, 


S,  S.  Laurie  309 

from  a  world,  real  indeed  but  not  rationally  coherent,  to  the 
Actual,  as  the  synthesis  of  a  systematic  unity  in  knowledge. 

So  far  epistemology.  When  however  Laurie  turns  to  meta- 
physics, it  appears  that  this  dualism  is  only  relative,  and  is  sub- 
ordinated to  a  Pluralistic  Monism,  in  which  once  more  the  at- 
tempt is  made  to  accomodate  the  reality  of  the  finite  to  the  all- 
comprehensive  unity  of  an  Absolute  Life.  For  it  is  the  ex- 
planation of  this  power  of  Reason  to  grasp  reality,  that  it  is 
itself  a  pulse  of  the  Infinite  Reason  in  which  we  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being.  God  lives  in  the  act  of  revealing  him- 
self in  and  to  finite  selves.  Nature  forming  the  medium  of  this 
revelation;  he  is  the  One  Being  in  which  and  out  of  which 
all  differences  arise,  including  even  the  supreme  opposition  of 
Subject  and  Object.  True  knowledge  of  the  world  is  possible 
because  man  is  really  one  with  Nature;  he  is  Nature  becoming 
conscious  in  and  through  its  highest  product.  He  finds  the 
reason-process  in  the  universe  because  he  is  himself  a  con- 
scious reason-process,  and  in  organic  continuity  with  the  whole; 
raised  to  self-identity  and  self-affirmation,  he  is  able  to  read 
and  interpret  the  total  record  through  the  "form"  of  this 
spiritual  movement  which  is  a  gift  of  the  divine  Reason  in  him. 
At  the  same  time  we  are  not  to  forget  that  the  pluralism  is  also 
real.  The  act  of  reason  by  which  we  realize  the  divine  purpose 
through  coming  to  know  God,  is  in  each  man  a  unique  center 
of  energy;  man  is  not  a  mere  passive  instrument,  and  the  Ab- 
solute can  be  realized  in  the  whole  only  by  being  realized  in 
each.  Laurie  struggles  heroically  with  this  conception  of  a 
"dependent  independence,"  but  to  very  little  purpose;  for  we 
are  paying  ourselves  with  words  when  we  profess  to  explain  the 
puzzling  facts  of  finiteness  by  an  appeal  to  the  "eternal  fact 
of  Negation  as  necessary  moment  in  Absolute  Being,"  or  the 
nature  of  the  individual  as  the  "thinking  of  God  caught  in  the 
Negation."  ^ 

8.  It  is  a  very  similar  solution  that  we  find,  in  closer  con- 
*  Synthetica,  Vol.  II,  pp.  65,  68. 


3IO       English  and  American  Philosophy 

nection  with  the  main  movement  of  Idealism,  and  expressed 
with  a  lucidity  in  striking  contrast  with  Laurie's  highly  tech- 
nical and  difficult  phraseology,  in  the  maturer  philosophy  of 
Andrew  Seth  Pringle-Pattison.  Some  of  Pringle-Pattison's 
earlier  writings  might  easily  give  the  impression  of  a  break 
with  the  traditional  tenets  of  the  idealistic  school.  His  He- 
gelianism  and  Personality,  in  particular,  contains  one  of  the 
most  effective  of  the  criticisms  of  Hegel's  logical  monism,  with 
its  absorption  of  finite  selves  in  the  one  comprehensive  Self; 
and  elsewhere  the  dualistic  claims  involved  in  human  knowing 
are  clearly  recognized,  in  opposition  to  the  evasions  of  the 
orthodox  idealistic  epistemology.  It  becomes  evident  however 
in  his  latest  volume,  The  Idea  of  God,  that  this  is  to  be  taken 
as  a  correction  of  absolutism,  rather  than  its  repudiation.  The 
argument  of  the  book  proceeds  from  the  need  of  utilizing  the 
life  of  ideal  values  to  interpret  reality,  instead  of  reducing 
reality  to  terms  of  the  lower  and  mechanical  categories ;  but  it  is 
critical  of  the  disposition  to  interpret  such  an  argument  by 
reference  to  the  claims  of  particular  emotional  needs  of  man's 
nature.  This  last  is  apt  to  take  the  shape  of  a  mistaken  oppo- 
sition between  the  spiritual  life  and  science,  and  of  a  dangerous 
disparagement  of  the  scientific  categories;  the  life  of  spirit 
ought  rather  to  be  regarded  as  a  higher  level  of  that  same  reality 
which  first  meets  us  in  nature.  So  again  on  the  side  of  man's 
relation  to  a  higher  Being.  It  is  the  validity  of  objective  values, 
not  the  rights  of  special  instincts,  that  is  decisive  here;  for  a 
true  philosophy,  the  center  of  gravity  is  not  in  the  claims  of 
the  individual,  but  in  God  as  revealing  himself  to  man,  and 
admitting  him  to  participation  in  a  universal  and  over-indi- 
vidual process. 

Man,  then,  is  an  organic  part  of  the  continuity  of  nature, 
which  only  for  this  reason  can  he  truly  know;  and  the  whole 
evolutionary  process  is  the  immanent  life  of  an  Absolute  which 
uses  nature  as  a  means  of^self-revelation  to  finite  beings,  and 


^A.  Seth  Pringle-Pattison  311 

whose  existence  is  alike  revealed  in,  and  constituted  by,  the  facts 
of  human  striving  through  which  strength  of  moral  fibre  is 
attained.  It  is  revealed,  that  is,  as  the  truth  at  this  particular 
level,  into  which  preceding  stages  have  been  taken  up;  we 
cannot  stop  with  humanity  however  as  our  highest  concept, 
since  human  life  clearly  finds  its  completion  in  a  source  that 
transcends  it.  From  this  eternal  source  all  that  is  real  de- 
rives its  being.  We  are  neither  to  suppose  then,  with  natural- 
ism, that  higher  forms  of  reality  can  be  explained  away  in 
terms  of  the  lower,  nor,  with  certain  more  recent  pluralistic 
philosophies,  that  literal  novelties  appear  in  the  course  of  de- 
velopment, which  in  no  sense  were  real  before.  In  the  con- 
tinuity of  the  universal  process  new  differences  emerge  which 
disclose  the  inadequacy  of  the  categories  of  a  previous  level 
for  interpreting  the  world ;  but  they  are  progressive  revelations, 
not  additions.  The  notion  of  sheer  accretions  to  the  sum  of 
reality,  successive  spurts  of  something  out  of  nothing,  is  un- 
thinkable. Meanwhile  we  are  not  to  regard  God  as  realized 
somehow  independently  of  his  developing  purpose  in  the  world, 
whether  at  the  end  of  the  time  process,  or  beyond  it  altogether. 
God  is  the  very  process  itself,  present  in  the  world  as  its 
Redeemer  in  an  eternal  act  of  self-realization  through  the  giving 
of  himself  to  others, — an  act  in  which  time  is  transcended,  and 
the  future  is  equally  implicated  with  the  past  and  present. 

No  English  defender  of  absolutism  has  shown  a  more  bal- 
anced feeling  than  Pringle-Pattison  for  the  diverse  elements 
that  enter  into  the  philosophical  problem;  and  if  the  result 
is  still  not  altogether  convincing,  it  is  possible  this  may  be 
bound  up  in  the  very  nature  of  an  effort  to  construct  by  thought 
an  object  of  speculative  knowledge  which  goes  beyond  any  pos- 
sibility of  imaginative  realization.  For  it  has  in  the  end  to 
be  admitted  that  for  the  how  of  God's  connection  alike  with 
the  physical  world  and  with  the  finite  selves  of  whom  he  is 
the  sustaining  life,  for  the  relation  of  eternity  to  time  and 


312        English  and  American  Philosophy 

progress,  for  all  the  problems  that  are  most  ultimate,  in  fact, 
we  have  nothing  in  experience  to  give  us  any  real  clue.^  Of 
the  very  nature  of  the  Absolute,  from  the  standpoint  of  its  own 
self-knowledge,  we  can  say  nothing,  not  even  that  it  is  personal ; 
in  Laurie's  phrase,  all  specific  predicates  are  in  reality,  not  of 
it.  And  the  claim  that  we  have  met  the  charge  of  scepticism 
and  phenomenalism  by  insisting  that  our  truth  is  true  jor  us, 
as  the  highest  which  we  possess,  and  is  to  be  held  as  true  until 
it  is  superseded,  is  surely  an  evasion.  None  but  the  most 
reckless  sceptic  has  ever  denied  that  practically  we  ought  to 
stick  to  the  most  satisfying  knowledge  we  can  get.  What 
phenomenalism  asserts  is,  that  there  exists  an  outlook  upon 
reality,  and  this  the  only  ultimately  real  one,  which  we  not 
only  cannot  attain,  but  which  we  are  certain  is  different  from 
our  own;  and  this  is  where  the  present  theory  leaves  us  also. 
Nor  is  it  clear  that  so  transcendent  a  reality  will  meet  the 
needs  of  religion  any  more  than  those  of  understanding.  There 
are  difficulties  in  plenty,  doubtless,  in  the  alternative  which 
Pringle-Pattison  rejects;  the  notion  of  God  as  a  Self  in  a  com- 
munity of  selves,  and  so  as  less  than  the  whole  sum  of  existing 
things,  raises  questions  that  are  hard  to  meet.  But  the  dif- 
ficulties are  at  least  in  terms  of  logic,  and  not  of  valuation. 
Unless  our  whole  social  experience  be  a  false  guide,  a  God  who 
existed  as  a  socius  would  in  so  far  show  an  actual  increment 
of  ethical,  if  not  of  metaphysical  worth;  to  say  nothing  of  the 
fact  that  he  would  be  in  essence  knowable,  and  not  a  mere 
condition  or  fount  of  knowledge. 

No  more  satisfactory  is  the  theory  of  Nature,  conceived 
as  a  form  of  reality  striving  toward  self-consciousness,  and 
attaining  in  man  an  organ  through  which  it  beholds  and  enjoys 
itself.^  If  this  means  that  God  himself  first  comes  to  con- 
sciousness in  man,  its  value  for  religion  is  dubious;  and  if 
it  means  that  man  is  nothing  but  the  physical  organism,  and, 

*Cf.  The  Idea  of  God,  pp.  202,  285,  293,  359,  364,  378,  390-1. 
*Ibid.,  pp.  Ill,  IIS,  127. 


A,  Seth  Pringle-Pattison  313 

through  the  organism,  the  physical  universe,  blossoming  into 
a  self-awareness,  it  seems  more  poetic  than  intelligible.  The 
theory  of  the  soul  as  the  entelechy  of  the  body  is  not  a  new 
one;  but  no  one  has  ever  taken  a  step  toward  carrying  through 
its  application  to  the  plain  differences  of  psychical  and  physical 
content  in  the  concrete.  It  conveys  a  definite  meaning  to 
say  that  the  world  without  man  would  not  be  complete,  in  that 
man  must  be  added  to  the  sum  of  things — other  than  himself 
— before  the  possibilities  of  existence  are  exhausted;  or  that 
the  being  of  things  passes  into  consciousness,  meaning  that 
their  ideal  essence  is  taken  up  into  human  knowledge;  or  that 
God  elicits  out  of  the  common  fund  of  externality  a  new  world 
of  appreciation  and  spiritual  communion,  if  this  means  that 
the  natural  world  is  the  theatre  of  human  action,  in  which  men 
fmd  ideally — not,  again,  by  actual  transmutation  of  existence 
— some  of  the  material  of  social  intercourse;  or  that  the  world 
seems  to  take  on  added  richness  as  we  develop  faculties  to 
apprehend  it,  in  the  sense  that  it  reveals  new  relationships  to 
us,  and  new  possibilities  of  use.  But  none  of  these  things 
lend  any  authority  to  such  a  claim  as  this,  that  music,  for 
example,  is  there  in  the  cosmic  system  known  to  me,  as  well 
as  here  in  me,  though  it  has  to  await  me  in  order  to  realize  its 
own  truth  in  the  system.^  The  possibility  of  music  must  of 
course  be  present;  and  if  all  possibilities  are  eternally  realized, 
so  somehow  music  must  be  actually  present  too.  And  were 
matter  to  be  taken,  not  as  a  stage  in  God's  self-realization,  but 
as  an  imperfect  rendering  of  God's  present  life  due  to  our 
limitations  of  knowledge,  we  might  have  the  right  to  claim  that 
our  growth  in  human  appreciations  is  a  revelation,  rather  than 
a  subjective  addition.  But  then  it  would  not  be  objects  them- 
selves that  develop  into  fuller  truth  in  us,  but  human  conscious- 
ness that  arrives  at  a  fuller  knowledge  of  God, — thereby  mak- 
ing no  doubt  its  social  contribution  to  the  wealth  of  being; 
and  matter  becomes  only  a  medium  for  this  revelation.    And  to 

^Laurie,  Synthetical  Vol.  I,  p.  ii8. 


314        English  and  American  Philosophy 

identify,  instead,  the  actual  life  of  God  with  the  potentialities 
of  nature  as  itself  evolving  into  man,  at  least  is  only  possible 
through  a  faith  in  the  unreality  of  Time  which  confounds  all 
our  human  attempts  at  clear  analysis,  and  leaves  "matter" 
quite  out  of  relation  to  our  everyday  conceptions  of  it. 


CHAPTER  VI 
PERSONAL  IDEALISM,  PANPSYCHISM  AND  REALISM 

§  I.    Personality  and  Religion.    Personal  Idealism 

I.  In  comparison  with  the  self-confidence  and  relative  soli- 
darity of  the  absolute  idealists,  and  their  highly  articulated 
and  comprehensive  program,  other  tendencies  in  the  latter  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century  run  the  risk  of  appearing  chaotic 
and  lacking  in  prestige.  It  was  not  until  the  appearance  of 
two  rival  philosophies, — first  pragmatism,  and  later  neo- 
realism, — showing  something  of  the  same  unity  of  logical 
technique  that  lends  itself  to  enthusiastic  discipleship  and  the 
founding  of  a  school,  and  marked  by  an  originality  of  stand- 
point which  could  not  be  waved  aside  as  mere  outgrown  tra- 
ditionalism, that  the  vogue  of  absolutism  was  seriously  im- 
perilled. Nevertheless  there  was  a  very  considerable  amount 
of  contemporaneous  thinking  going  on  to  which  the  idealists, 
in  their  critical  preoccupation  with  the  empiricism  of  Locke 
and  Hume,  and  their  conviction  that  Germany  had  at  last  hit 
upon  the  one  true  method  in  philosophy,  were  inclined  to  do 
something  less  than  justice.  Most  of  this  also  was  influenced 
in  some  measure  by  Kant.  But  in  the  main  it  had  more 
realistic  sources,  in  part  the  Scottish  philosophy  of  Common 
Sense,  in  part  the  older  English  tradition  modified  by  recent 
advances  of  science,  and  partly  also  foreign-grown  products 
such  as,  in  particular,  the  idealistic  realism  of  Lotze. 

The  confused  cross-currents  that  are  present  here  will  neces- 
sarily lead  to  some  degree  of  arbitrariness  in  any  attempt  at  a 

315 


3i6        English  and  American  Philosophy 

brief  survey;  but  certain  rough  generalizations  can  be  made. 
The  representatives  of  the  various  tendencies  agree  in  rejecting 
the  epistemology  of  absolutism,  and  for  the  most  part  are 
realists  in  knowledge;  they  accept  some  sort  of  dualism  be- 
tween thought  and  things,  such  that  the  passage  from  one  to 
the  other  still  constitutes  for  them  a  problem.  In  their  on- 
tology they  differ  more  widely.  On  the  one  hand,  especially 
where  the  scientific  interest  is  pronounced,  there  appears  some 
more  or  less  thoroughgoing  form  of  physical  realism,  which  at- 
tempts to  find  a  more  solid  foundation  for  scientific  knowl- 
edge than  the  sensationalism  of  the  earlier  empiricists  supn 
plies.  Much  more  characteristic  of  the  period,  however,  is 
an  idealistic  or  quasi-idealistic  realism  having  its  source  in 
religious  and  ethical,  rather  than  in  naturalistic  motives.  Here, 
instead  of  connecting  ideal  values  with  an  Absolute,  there  is  a 
general  disposition  to  make  the  finite  person  the  center  of 
philosophy,  using  this  as  a  clue  for  interpreting,  more  com- 
monly in  a  theistic  sense,  the  fundamental  nature  of  things. 

This  interest  in  the  self  shows  three  closely  related  aspects, 
which  enter  into  what  is  supposed  to  be  its  speculative  value. 
First,  there  is  the  traditional  interest  of  theism,  which  wishes 
to  use  human  personality  as  a  clue,  and  read  it  into  the  ulti- 
mate nature  of  existence.  Tied  up  with  religion  also,  though 
based  as  well  on  simpler  human  demands,  is  the  desire  to 
find  the  universe  a  permanent  abiding-place  for  man,  and  not 
a  mere  stage  on  which  he  plays  a  transient  earthly  role.  Finally, 
and  most  important  philosophically,  there  is  the  determination 
to  conceive  reality  in  such  a  way  that  the  ideal  values,  moral 
and  otherwise,  which  attach  to  human  life  and  human  nature, 
may  be  felt  to  be  solidly  grounded,  and  not  the  precarious  by- 
products of  an  impersonal  evolution.  All  of  these  motives 
converge  in  one  polemical  purpose — to  overthrow  that  system 
of  scientific  naturalism  by  which  the  claims  of  religion,  im- 
mortality, and  conscience,  have  appeared  to  so  many  modem 
thinkers  to  be  jeopardized. 


Tennyson  317 

2.  The  emotional  force  back  of  such  an  endeavor  gets  a 
highly  characteristic  expression  in  the  poetry  of  Alfred  Tenny- 
son. It  has  been  one  clear  tendency  of  scientific  thought  to 
depreciate  the  importance  of  man  and  his  desires  in  the  uni- 
verse. We  are  but  so  many  transient  products  of  a  great 
cosmic  process,  utterly  inconsequential,  except  to  ourselves,  in 
the  vast  stretch  of  law-abiding  phenomena.  We  work  for  ends; 
we  have  various  preferences  for  this  thing  over  that,  to  which 
we  give  such  names  as  right,  justice,  beauty;  we  are  concerned 
with  our  own  destinies,  and  with  interests,  religious  interests 
for  example,  with  which  these  seem  to  us  bound  up.  But 
science  does  not  speak  of  ends  at  all.  It  substitutes  impersonal 
laws  for  the  notion  of  God  and  religion,  the  species  for  the  in- 
dividual, scientific  understanding  for  poetry  and  emotional 
aspiration.  As  we  trace  life  back  further  and  further  into  the 
past,  all  those  qualities  that  we  call  human  and  moral  gradually 
disappear,  until  we  can  scarcely  avoid  putting  to  ourselves  the 
question.  Have  the  ideals  that  give  worth  to  human  experience, 
rooted  as  they  are  in  bestiality  and  carnage,  any  ultimate 
validity  at  all,  or  are  they  not  mere  delusions  when  looked  at 
in  their  larger  context? 

To  all  that  this  tendency  implies,  Tennyson  found  his  own 
convictions  profoundly  opposed.  For  him,  the  special  locus 
of  the  meaning  and  significance  of  experience  is  just  the  fact 
of  personal  human  relationships,  which  bind  man  with  his 
fellow  man,  and  show  themselves  on  the  side  of  feeling  in 
sympathy  and  human  love.  And  in  personality  he  finds  not 
only  the  presupposition  necessary  for  the  maintenance  of  moral 
values,  but  the  one  irreducible  core  of  reality  and  fact  which 
remains  to  us  philosophically  amid  the  uncertainties  and  il- 
lusions of  experience.  "You  may  tell  me  that  my  hand  and 
my  foot  are  only  imaginary  symbols  of  my  existence — I  could 
believe  you;  but  you  never,  never  can  convince  me  that  the  / 
is  not  an  eternal  Reality,  and  that  the  Spiritual  is  not  the  true 
and  real  part  of  me."    And  in  the  certainty  of  this  his  own 


3i8        English  and  American  Philosophy 

spiritual  reality,  Tennyson  discovers  a  way  of  escape  from 
the  unsatisfactoriness  incident  to  a  naturalistic  universe. 
Briefly,  it  is  the  solution  of  faith, — ^a  faith  resting  upon  a  lively 
conviction  that  certain  things  are  so  important  that  they  give 
us  a  right  to  hold  to  them  whatever  the  intellectual  temptation 
to  set  them  aside.  A  true  philosophy  bids  us  look  not  to  science 
and  what  is,  but  to  the  ideals  that  have  their  root  in  blind 
gropings  after  what  is  higher  and  better  than  anything  yet 
realized  in  the  world.  The  interpretation  of  life  lies  in  this 
constant  warfare  between  the  baseness  in  our  blood  which  is 
the  heritage  of  an  animal  past,  and  the  adumbrations  of  a  final 
victory  when  our  true  nature  shall  have  come  into  its  own.  Such 
a  goal  is  the  object  of  faith  and  not  of  knowledge,  because  it 
has  not  yet  appeared  fully  in  the  realm  of  fact.  But  it  is  the 
superiority  of  man  over  the  brute  that  he  can  thus  act  by 
faith;  though  facts  seem  to  bear  him  down,  he  can  "faintly 
trust  the  larger  hope,"  and  so  be  put  on  his  way  to  its  realiza- 
tion. All  morality  and  religion  consist  in  not  allowing  ourselves 
to  be  overborne  by  the  pressure  of  the  apparent  nature  of  things, 
to  be  so  enchained  to  so-called  facts  that  we  are  blind  to  their 
future  promise.  And  guided  by  this  inner  light,  the  world 
which  to  science  is  only  the  outcome  of  mechanical  law  be- 
comes the  imperfect  expression  of  a  divine  purpose;  and  man, 
instead  of  a  chance  product  of  impersonal  forces,  shows  himself 
the  inheritor  of  an  eternal  destiny,  and  the  possessor  of  an 
absolute  value  in  the  scheme  of  things. 

For  the  rest,  if  we  ask  for  a  more  positive  account  of  this 
reality,  we  can  expect  no  clear  answer;  indeed  we  know  it 
more  truly  when  we  do  not  try  to  subject  it  to  our  finite 
measurement.  We  may  be  confident  that  somehow  there  is 
a  good  meaning  to  life  which  will  secure  the  interest  that  man 
calls  spiritual,  that  through  the  ages  one  increasing  purpose 
runs  with  which  man  progressively  can  cooperate  and  so  rea- 
lize his  own  ends.  But  what  God  is  we  cannot  hope  to  set 
down  in  human  words.    Our  truest  knowledge  comes  in  those 


Tennyson  319 

moments  of  mystical  insight  when  we  cease  trying  to  argue 
and  prove  directly,  and  pass,  by  an  intimate  experience  of 
feeling,  from  doubt  to  certitude.  Meanwhile  this  fundamental 
ground  of  reality,  though  it  is  above  our  human  comprehen- 
sion, we  are  not  to  forget  that  we  can  rise  to  only  by  starting 
from  ourselves;  and  we  are  not  to  let  go  our  hold  therefore 
on  this  positive  content,  as  at  least  truer  than  blank  igno- 
rance. Nor  may  God  override  the  human  personalities  from 
which  originate  all  our  conceptions  of  value.  Tennyson  insists 
always  upon  the  intimacy  of  God's  relation  to  man.  But  while 
he  would  remove  Nature  as  a  barrier,  and  interpret  it  as  the 
immediate  symbol  or  expression  of  an  immanent  divine  Power, 
man  still  retains  his  integrity: 

Dark  is  the  world  to  thee:  thyself  art  the  reason  why; 

For  is  He  not  all  but  thou,  that  hast  power  to  feel  "I  am  I?" 

3.  In  a  more  logically  exacting  form,  the  "faith  philosophy" 
of  Tennyson  comes  to  play  an  increasingly  important  part  in 
the  development  of  recent  English  philosophy  outside  the 
range  of  naturalism  and  of  absolutism.  One  not  inconsider- 
able force  in  this  direction  is  to  be  found  in  the  philosophical 
teaching  of  Alexander  Campbell  Fraser,  Hamilton's  successor 
in  the  chair  of  philosophy  at  Edinburgh.  At  the  outset  an 
adherent  of  the  Scottish  school,  the  realistic  motive  is  in 
Fraser  appreciably  modified  by  Berkeley's  influence — the  later 
Berkeley  more  particularly.  While  his  doctrine  is  not  wholly 
unambiguous,  on  the  whole  he  seems  disposed  to  regard  the 
natural  world  as  constructed  out  of  sense  perception  by  the 
indwelling  presence  of  the  divine  Reason;  in  any  case,  it  is  not 
to  be  taken  as  self-contained  and  independent,  but  as  a  mani- 
festation of  God's  active  nature,  whose  essence  lies  in  its 
capacity  to  reveal  God  to  man.  It  is  perhaps  on  principle  that 
Fraser  refuses  to  define  himself  very  explicitly  here,  since  a 
certain  distrust  of  the  powers  of  the  metaphysical  intellect 
is  the  most  distinctive  feature  of  his  philosophical  point  of  view. 


320        English  and  American  Philosophy 

Not  only  as  against  a  naturalistic  absorption  in  phenomena, 
but  in  opposition  to  an  arrogant  claim  to  complete  speculative 
knowledge,  he  stands  for  the  "venture  of  faith,"  though  of  a 
faith  critically  verified  by  reflection.  While  we  must  recognize 
that  there  is  perfect  Reason  in  the  world  corresponding  to 
man's  cognitive  efforts, — since  otherwise  we  could  not  find,  as 
within  limits  we  do  find,  the  world  interpretable, — ^yet  at  best 
our  finite  reason  is  only  very  tentative  and  groping.  It  is 
guided  not  by  full  insight,  but  by  the  emotional  assurance  of 
a  fundamental  Goodness  in  the  universe  which  will  not  put  us 
to  moral  confusion;  indeed  such  moral  trustworthiness  is  all 
that  gives  us  any  right  to  retain  our  confidence  that  even  the 
scientific  order  which  we  trace  among  phenomena  will  not  fail 
us. 

4.  The  same  mode  of  vindicating  human  interests  that  rest 
on  faith  or  feeling,  pressed  still  further  in  the  direction  of  a 
scepticism  of  the  logical  instrument,  is  adopted  with  much  dia- 
lectical skill  and  literary  effectiveness  by  Arthur  J.  Balfour. 
Balfour  directs  his  efforts  mainly  against  naturalism,  though 
more  incidentally  he  pays  his  respects  also  to  Idealism  and 
its  claims  to  supply  the  basis  for  a  logically  stable  and  demon- 
strative metaphysics.  The  indictment  of  naturalism  is  twofold. 
In  the  first  place,  a  naturalistic  origin  for  our  aesthetic  and 
moral  and  religious  convictions  is  of  a  sort  to  leave  them  with- 
out any  reasonable  foundation.  The  value  of  our  most  valu- 
able beliefs  is  lost  if  they  have  no  more  congruous  source  than 
the  blind  transformations  of  physical  energy.  They  become 
mere  chance  episodes  in  the  welter  of  meaningless  events;  and 
the  recognition  of  this  is  certain  in  the  end  to  sap  their  vitality. 
In  point  of  fact,  the  principle  of  natural  selection  has  so  far 
not  been  successful  in  making  out  its  case  as  a  matter  of 
natural  history  even,  since  it  is  just  in  the  instances  where  we 
find  great  intrinsic,  as  opposed  to  instrumental  worth, — the 
sense  of  beauty,  for  example, — that  the  direct  effect  of  selec- 
tion is  to  all  appearance  negligible. 


A,  /.  Balfour  321 

But  now  also — and  this  is  logically  fatal  as  well — the  same 
conclusion  applies  even  to  "truth."  No  philosophy  can  be 
truly  consistent  without  some  correspondence  between  the  ac- 
cepted value  of  results  and  the  accepted  theory  of  causes;  and 
a  creed  therefore  contradicts  itself  which  sets,  as  naturalism 
does,  a  high  value  on  true  beliefs,  and  at  the  same  time  holds 
a  theory  as  to  the  ultimate  origin  of  beliefs  which  suggests 
their  falsity.  For  if  our  faculties  of  belief  are  the  chance  out- 
come of  natural  selection  due  to  the  insistent  needs  of  physical 
life,  there  is  not  the  least  probability  that  an  instrument  will 
in  this  way  have  been  created  fitted  for  exploring  the  secrets 
of  the  universe,  and  for  supplying  a  guarantee  to  those  larger 
considerations,  indifferent  to  survival  needs,  on  which  a  total 
world  view — and  this  includes  the  world  view  of  the  phenome- 
nalist — depends.  Actually,  our  beliefs  rest  in  large  degree, 
not  on  scientific  proof,  but  on  authority — by  which  is  meant 
not  definite  authorities  assigned  as  a  reason  for  believing,  but 
the  alogical  convictions  which  we  accepted  in  the  first  place, 
and  continue  to  hold,  without  attempting  to  give  reasons  for 
them  at  all;  the  whole  human  race,  including  the  philosopher, 
lives  by  faith,  if  by  this  we  mean  conviction  apart  from  and  in 
excess  of  evidence.  To  understand  belief  we  have  to  take 
account  not  merely  of  premises  and  their  conclusions,  but  of 
needs  and  their  satisfactions;  and  there  is  no  reason  whatever 
for  limiting  this  to  purely  material  needs.  The  true  function 
of  reason  is  the  incidental  one  of  correcting  here  and  there  our 
opinions  in  detail,  while  still  always  presupposing  such  an 
alogical  background.  It  perhaps  is  worth  noting  here  that 
when  he  calls  belief  "non-rational,"  Balfour  is  presupposing  one 
particular  ideal  of  reason  only;  he  does  not  consider  the  pos- 
sibility that  "rationality"  might  itself  be  defined  in  terms  of 
the  mutual  support  which  beliefs  render  one  another,  without 
demanding  for  them  individually  any  demonstrable  finality. 
As  to  more  positive  philosophical  conclusions,  Balfour  argues 
that,  while  the  evidence  can  never  be  compulsory,  an  intelligent 


322       English  and  American  Philosophy 

guidance  of  the  world-process,  such  as  theism  presupposes, 
makes  at  any  rate  more  understandable  the  claim  alike  of  truth, 
and  of  feeling,  to  connect  us  with  reality;  it  helps  provide  an 
intelligible  explanation  of  the  good  fortune  which  has  made 
natural  causes  which  are  not  reasons,  issue  in  what  is  by 
hypothesis  a  rational  system. 

5.  It  would  be  useless  to  attempt  to  follow  out  with  any- 
thing like  completeness  the  role  of  faith  in  contemporary  phi- 
losophy, since  it  is  present,  with  varying  degrees  of  emphasis, 
wherever  ''voluntarism'*  has  attempted  to  supplant  "intel- 
lectualism."  Comparable  in  point  of  literary  skill  with  Bal- 
four's work,  is  W.  H.  Mallock's  plausibly  written  volume  Is 
Life  Worth  Living?  which  attacks  naturalism  from  a  stand- 
point of  faith  in  ecclesiastical  authority,  and  tries  to  show  that 
apart  from  supematuralism,  ethical  as  well  as  religious  con- 
victions lose  their  support,  and  are  destined  to  extinction. 
Worth  noting  for  a  degree  of  novelty  in  the  method  of  aj>- 
proach,  is  a  recent  book  also  by  W.  R.  Sorley.  Here  the  argu- 
ment starts  from  the  need  of  overcoming  the  empirical  discord 
between  nature  and  morality,  the  reign  of  scientific  law  and 
the  objectivity  of  values;  and  it  holds  that  the  only  way  to 
interpret  the  world  of  nature  successfully  as  a  consistent  part 
of  the  same  rational  universe  with  the  realm  of  values,  is  to 
regard  it  as  an  instrument  for  the  discovery  and  production 
of  values  by  finite  minds.  The  truest  account  of  reality  is,  ac- 
cordingly, in  terms  of  a  purposive  system  in  which  nature  is  the 
medium  of  moralization,  and  human  selves  are  free  agents  who 
work  out  the  unity  of  the  universal  purpose  in  achieving  their 
own  perfection.  Another  book,  which  calls  attention  to  the 
wide  philosophic  range  of  a  humanistic  appeal  to  interests  and 
values  for  the  establishing  of  truth,  is  a  cooperative  volume 
called  Personal  Idealism,  emanating  from  a  group  of  Oxford 
men.  Here  we  find  ranged  together  the  voluntaristic  psy- 
chology of  G.  F.  Stout,  the  Berkeleian  theism  of  Hastings 
Rashdall,  the  pragmatism  of  F.  C.  S.  Schiller  and  Henry  Sturt, 


John  Grote  323 

and  the  spiritualistic  idealism  of  Boyce  Gibson,  the  trans- 
lator and  popularizer  of  Eucken. 

6.  Besides  furnishing,  from  the  resources  of  its  emotional 
life,  the  impulse  to  belief,  and  the  value  content  of  experience, 
the  self  may  also  be  utilized  to  supply  the  categories  in  terms 
of  which  to  think  intellectually  the  nature  of  the  world;  and 
such  an  attempt  to  interpret  the  forms  of  thought  employed 
by  the  older  theistic  argument,  as  themselves  understandable 
only  when  we  take  them  as  functions  within  the  unity  of  a 
personal  life, — an  attempt  largely  influenced  by  Kant, — is 
characteristic  of  the  religious  philosophy  of  recent  years. 
Absolutism  of  course  may,  and  does,  adopt  a  similar  program, 
very  explicitly  in  the  case  of  Green ;  but  the  logic  of  absolutism 
has  nevertheless  been  pretty  clearly  in  the  direction  of  a  more 
impersonal  construction,  and  the  substitution  of  Mind,  or  Spirit, 
or  Experience,  for  the  "self"  concept.  An  anticipation  of  this 
"personalism"  is  to  be  found  in  a  volume,  not  as  well  known 
as  its  ability  deserves,  by  John  Grote,  a  brother  of  the  his- 
torian, who  held  the  chair  of  moral  philosophy  at  Cambridge 
from  1855  to  1866.  Grote's  book,  which  is  suggestive  rather 
than  systematic,  is  primarily  a  criticism  of  phenomenalism,  in 
opposition  to  which  he  would  justify  our  right  to  investigate 
the  nature  of  things, — what  they  are,  as  against  merely  what 
they  do.  The  background  for  the  criticism  is  an  epistemology 
which  is  influenced  by  Kant,  but  which  repudiates  Kant^s 
agnosticism.  The  defect  of  scientific  phenomenalism  lies  in  its 
disposition  to  take  as  it  stands  the  world  that  has  already  been 
constructed  in  knowledge,  and  to  overlook  the»fact  that  there 
can  be  no  reality,  for  us  at  least,  except  as  it  is  interpreted  in 
connection  with  its  knowability.  And  if  known,  it  must  in  so 
far  be  "anthropomorphic."  Knowledge  presupposes  the  activity 
of  the  mind, — a  mind  that  is  actual,  and  neither  a  mere  phe- 
nomenon, nor  yet  a  formal  abstraction, — in  projecting  itself 
into  the  confusion  of  sense  data,  and  imposing  its  categories 
on  nature.    It  does  this  not  in  any  final  and  a  priori  way,  but 


324       English  and  American  Philosophy 

experimentally,  through  a  self-correcting  process,  which,  how- 
ever, leaves  us  a  rational  ground  for  the  confidence  that  our 
interpretative  categories  are  really  present  in  reality  itself;  we 
feel  the  cognitive  act,  that  is,  not  as  a  creation,  but  as  a  recog- 
nition — the  meeting  with  a  Mind  already  there.  Knowledge 
accordingly  is  the  attributing,  to  what  we  are  conscious  of  as 
different  from  ourselves,  of  that  which  is  in  ourselves;  thus  the 
fundamental  notion  of  unity,  for  example,  implied  in  the  con- 
cept of  a  "thing,"  is  not  itself  phenomenal,  but  is  the  pro- 
jection of  ourselves,  and  of  the  unity  of  end  that  characterizes 
a  self,  into  the  mass  of  phenomenal  data.  In  the  same 'way 
Grote  criticizes  the  positivistic  conception  of  the  "ought,"  and 
of  "history"  as  the  source  of  our  ideals;  for  the  ideal,  we  must 
look  again  to  man's  inner  nature  and  demands. 

7.  The  emphasis  on  the  self  as  a  source  of  the  categories 
for  rendering  reality  intelligible,  as  well  as  supplying  inner 
motives  for  belief,  is  present,  as  has  been  said,  in  most  of  the 
recent  philosophy  of  theism.  Such  a  theistic  idealism,  which 
aims  in  one  way  or  another  to  get  rid  of  the  independent  and 
alien  role  of  matter,  and  reduce  all  reality  to  a  "commerce  of 
minds,"  is  most  fully  elaborated  in  the  systematic  writings  of 
the  American  philosophers  G.  T.  Ladd  and  B.  P.  Bowne. 
Among  other  recent  theists  are  A.  T.  Ormond,  James  Lind- 
say, and  George  Galloway.  A  theistic  argument  starting  this 
time  from  a  Berkeleian  basis, — that  of  Hastings  Rashdall, — 
is  deserving  of  notice  for  its  explicit  recognition  of  what  is  of 
course  a  corollary  of  any  philosophy  of  this  type — the  exis- 
tential limitation  or  finiteness  of  God, — and  for  its  endeavor 
to  qualify  such  a  concept  properly,  and  defend  it  against  the 
religious  claims  of  Absolutism.  In  a  more  extreme  form  this 
doctrine  of  a  finite  God  had  previously  been  urged  in  an  early 
work  of  the  pragmatist  F.  C.  S.  Schiller;  and  very  recently,  it 
has  attracted  wide  attention  through  its  adoption  by  the  nov- 
elist H.  G.  Wells.  Wells'  defence  of  the  conception,  as  alone 
having  true  religious  value,  is  much  in  the  spirit  of  J.  S.  Mill; 


Panpsychism  325 

it  finds  the  needs  of  religion  satisfied  by  a  God  who  is  frankly 
the  militant  leader  of  men  in  a  campaign  against  evil  and  suf- 
fering, and  who  has  no  creative  responsibility  for  the  back- 
lying  world  of  Veiled  Being,  in  which  evil  is  so  real  and  so 
burdensome  a  fact. 

§  2.    Panpsychism 

I.  Alongside  theistic  idealism  and  personalism  with  its — for 
the  most  part — religious  interest,  and  at  times  combining  with 
this,  is  another  idealistic  tendency  of  considerable  importance 
in  recent  philosophy,  whose  motive  is  more  distinctly  specu- 
lative. "Panpsychism"  is  a  theory  which  has  its  source  in  the 
first  instance  in  an  attempt  to  account  for  the  relationship  of 
mind  and  body,  without  presupposing  two  separate  and  inter- 
acting entities.  As  such  it  has  found  wide  acceptance,  not  only 
for  the  reason  that  a  causal  relation  between  alien  forms  of 
reality  has  seemed  difficult  to  understand,  but,  more  especially, 
because  interaction  appears  to  break  in  upon  the  continuity 
of  physical  law.  Among  the  scientists,  accordingly,  some  theory 
of  "parallelism"  as  a  solution  of  the  mind-body  problem  began 
early  to  be  adopted  as  the  most  plausible  working  hypothesis. 
Frequently  this  professed  to  be  nothing  more  than  a  methodo- 
logical assumption,  further  metaphysical  questions  being  left 
unconsidered.  But  where  the  ultimate  rationale  of  the  situ- 
ation was  made  an  object  of  investigation  at  all,  it  was  found 
almost  inevitably  to  lead  beyond  the  mere  empirical  connec- 
tion of  consciousness  with  the  particular  facts  of  nervous  struc- 
ture, to  the  supposition'of  a  more  far-reaching  correspondence. 
Such  a  speculative  theory  might  thereupon  take  one  of  two 
general  forms.  For  the  first,  mind  and  matter  are  held  to  be 
"aspects"  of  a  single  reality,  a  basis  of  unity  being  postulated 
in  a  more  ultimate  substance  whose  essence  is  beyond  our 
knowledge.  This  is  a  theory  already  met  with  more  than  once 
among  the  philosophers  of  naturalism;  a  further  instance,  with 


326       English  and  American  Philosophy 

a  religious  bias,  is  a  volume  by  J.  A.  Picton  called  the  Mystery 
of  Matter,  in  which  the  conception  of  an  ultimate  reality  with 
diverse  manifestations  receives  a  quasi-spiritualistic  interpre- 
tation to  which  the  writer*  gives  the  name  of  Christian  Pan- 
theism. The  second  form  is  the  one  adopted  by  Clifford  in 
his  mind-stuff  theory,  and  more  vaguely  anticipated  by  Alfred 
Barratt;  this  looks  upon  the  psychical  as  itself  the  sole  reality, 
while  matter  now  becomes  the  appearance  that  mind  presents 
to  an  outside  observer. 

2.  Among  psychologists,  in  particular,  this  last  conception 
has  found  a  rather  wide  acceptance.  Of  its  more  romantic 
possibilities,  though  in  this  case  from  a  biological  rather  than 
a  psychological  starting  point,  Samuel  Butler  furnishes  an 
example.  Butler's  doctrine  originates  as  an  attempt  to  supplant 
Darwin's  theory  of  natural  selection  by  the  notion  of  an  inner 
teleology;  and  it  rests  upon  two  main  theses — the  literal  iden- 
tity of  offspring  with  parent,  and  the  reduction  of  instinct  and 
habit  to  a  persisting  memory,  becoming  unconscious  in  pro- 
portion as  it  gains  efficiency,  of  actions  performed  by  the 
organism  in  the  person  of  its  forefathers.  In  this  way  each 
new  individual  is  enabled  to  manufacture  the  organs  which 
it  needs,  essentially  as  it  manufactures  mechanical  tools, — 
which  last  are,  indeed,  nothing  but  extensions  of  the  human 
organs  beyond  the  confines  of  the  body.  Butler  goes  on  to  draw 
the  conclusion  that  what  we  know  as  an  individual  is,  on  the  one 
hand,  composed  of  smaller  cell-minds,  while  also  in  the  other 
direction  it  is  a  particle  in  a  wider  life-process  which  animates 
the  world,  this  world- God  in  turn  entering  into  a  still  more 
inclusive,  though  to  us  an  unknown.  Deity.  At  first  Butler 
had  limited  conscious  memory  to  the  organic  world;  but  in 
his  later  books  the  limitation  is  withdrawn,  and  every  atom 
of  matter  without  exception  is  endowed  with  life  and  memory. 

3.  The  evident  possibilities  which  panpsychism  holds  out 
for  a  religious  philosophy,  suggested  in  Butler's  metaphysics, 
have  already  appeared  in  connection  with  absolute  idealism, 


James  Hinton  327 

particularly  in  the  treatment  which  it  receives  from  Royce. 
An  interesting  variant  of  this  religious  interpretation  is  to  be 
found  in  the  writings  of  James  Hinton,  which  lie  on  the  border 
line  between  philosophy  and  literature.  Hinton  accepts,  on  a 
certain  level,  the  right  of  phenomenalism  to  protest  against 
the  intrusion  of  doubtfully  scientific  forces  and  concepts;  the 
remedy  is  not  to  dispute  the  claims  of  a  mechanistic  science 
in  its  own  sphere,  but  to  transform  this  world  of  science  as  a 
whole  by  a  spiritual  reinterpretation.  The  peculiarity  of  Hin- 
ton's  doctrine  lies  in  the  particular  explanation  given  for  the 
fact  that  reality  thus  reveals  itself  to  us  under  the  aspect  of 
phenomena.  Phenomenal  matter  is  dead,  inert;  it  shows 
nothing  of  that  spontaneous  activity  which  we  are  bound  to 
conceive  as  belonging  to  true  Being.  But  instead  of  looking 
for  the  source  of  this  inertness  in  nature  itself,  we  should  re- 
verse the  process;  if  reality  in  its  true  being  cannot  be  inert, 
then  the  inertness  which  characterizes  it  to  man^s  consciousness 
must  be  due  to  his  own  state  and  condition.  We  view  the  world 
as  physical,  only  because  of  a  defect  in  ourselves  which  modi- 
fies our  perception;  some  of  the  constituents  of  reality  which 
make  it  real  have  dropped  out  in  our  apprehension  of  it.  And 
these  constituents  are  reinstated  when  we  turn  from  the  in- 
tellect to  the  organs  of  moral  and  spiritual  knowledge — to 
conscience  and  emotion;  to  rise  to  true  Being,  to  the  Absolute, 
to  God  the  perfect  unity  of  Life  and  Love,  we  have  only  to 
correct  the  subjective  fault  to  which  the  phenomenal  is  due. 
Man  has  thus  made  matter  by  his  sin,  his  selfishness.  We  see 
matter  because  only  love  can  see  love;  wherever  there  is  not- 
love,  there  is  matter.  So  even  of  the  self  as  an  individual. 
Persons  are  states  of  fallen  humanity;  it  is  only  as  material 
that  men  are  many  and  separate,  and  redemption  means  the 
overcoming  of  the  separation  of  man  from  his  fellow  man  and 
God  by  the  path  of  love  and  self-sacrifice. 

4.    Another  and  more  technical  philosopher,  in  whom  a 
panpsychist  metaphysics  is  allied,  however,  with  a  scientific 


328       English  and  American  Philosophy 

rather  than  a  religious  interest,  is  Carveth  Read.  For  Read 
also  we  come  in  direct  contact  with  the  ultimately  real  only 
in  immediate  consciousness;  that  portion  of  empirical  reality 
which  extends  beyond  consciousness — the  external  world  which 
includes  our  own  bodies — is  not  thus  ultimate,  but  represents 
reality  in  the  form  of  a  system  of  phenomena  which  conscious- 
ness constructs.  Behind  such  appearances,  however,  we  are 
forced  for  various  reasons  to  believe  that  a  transcendent  reality 
exists,  more  particularly  because  it  is  needed  to  account  for 
changes  in  phenomena  in  the  absence  of  any  known  percipient, 
and  for  our  conviction  that  a  single  external  world  is  common 
to  different  men.  This  wider  reality  we  may  reasonably  con- 
jecture is  in  its  nature  like  the  piece  of  it  which  we  directly 
know;  for  if  consciousness  were  not  originally  a  factor  in  all 
existence,  its  beginnings  would,  on  the  principle  of  continuity, 
be  impossible  to  account  for.  The  entire  nature  of  existence 
cannot  indeed  be  fully  expressed  by  consciousness;  there  is  a 
transcendent  being  which  is  conscious,  or  whose  activity  con- 
sciousness represents.  But  some  knowledge  of  this  existence 
we  possess,  partly  from  the  laws  of  phenomena  which  represent 
it  objectively,  and  partly  from  the  laws  of  that  self-conscious- 
ness which  is  not  a  phenomenon,  but  the  reality  itself  sub- 
jectively conditioned.  Since  all  reality  is  conscious,  there  is 
nothing  to  prevent  our  supposing  that  sensational  qualities, 
even  secondary  qualities,  reveal  to  us  in  some  measure  how 
reality  itself  actually  jeels;  but  the  resemblance  that  true  cog- 
nition presupposes  is  more  safely  to  be  looked  for,  for  scientific 
purposes  at  any  rate,  in  ultimate  relations,  or  "forms"  of  con- 
sciousness,— notably  succession,  coexistence,  change,  and  order 
of  change.  In  evolutionary  terms,  knowledge  may  be  regarded 
as  a  function  of  nature  whereby  she  comes  to  an  awareness 
of  the  characters  that  constitute  her  essence. 

5.  On  the  whole,  the  most  usual,  and  perhaps  the  most 
natural  affiliation  of  panpsychism,  has  been  with  the  hy- 
pothesis of  a  unitary  and  all-embracing  world  consciousness. 


James  Ward  329 

This  is  not  a  logical  necessity  however;  panpsychism  may  be 
monadistic,  as  in  Leibniz,  and  find  the  spiritual  reality  of  the 
world  of  nature  in  personal  beings  analogous  to  the  human 
self,  or  it  may  indeed  be  atomistic,  as  in  the  case  of  Clifford, 
and  subordinate  the  nature  of  the  self,  whether  human  or 
divine,  to  its  constituent  elements  of  mind-stuff.  And  in  its 
recent  career  both  of  these  tendencies  are  ably  represented,  the 
former  in  particular  by  James 'Ward,^  the  latter  by  C.  A. 
Strong. 

Ward  is  primarily  a  psychologist,  and  his  article  on  Psy- 
chology in  the  ninth  edition  of  the  Encycloi>edia  Britannica  was 
one  of  the  chief  influences  in  bringing  about  the  displacement 
of  the  older  association  psychology  by  its  more  humanistic  and 
voluntaristic  successor.  His  earlier  book.  Naturalism  and  Ag- 
nosticism, is  a  particularly  vigorous  attack  upon  the  tendencies 
indicated  in  the  title.  It  aims  to  show  in  the  first  place  that 
the  mechanistic  concepts  of  science  are  only  methodological 
devices  adopted  for  human  convenience.  There  have  been  two 
main  ways  of  defending  spiritual  interests  against  naturalistic 
deductions  from  the  results  of  science.  All  that  the  scientist 
is  inclined  to  claim  for  the  universality  of  his  laws  may  be 
granted  freely,  and  then  the  sting  removed  by  reinterpreting 
the  whole  situation  in  such  a  way  that  mechanism  now 
enters  as  a  subordinate  element  into  a  higher  category,  which, 
accordingly,  does  not  compete  with  it  at  all.  Or,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  may  attempt  in  various  ways  to  weaken  the  force  of 
the  scientific  claims  themselves.  This  in  a  crude  form  was  the 
method  which  supernaturalism  had  adopted;  and  in  spite  of 
the  discredit  into  which  of  late  it  has  fallen,  logically  its  case 
was  not  a  bad  one.  As  against  a  superstitious  veneration  for 
the  accepted  scientific  formulas  of  the  day,  at  any  rate,  it  was 
still  possible  to  urge,  with  Stanley  Jevons,  the  purely  tenta- 
tive and  hypothetical  character  of  all  laws  of  science, — which 

*A  very  recent  defense  of  the  same  conception  is  C.  A.  Richardson's 
Spiritual  Pluralism  and  Recent  Philosophy . 


330       English  and  American  Philosophy 

are  only  inductions  from  a  very  limited  experience, — the  ex- 
cellent chance  that  they  may  later  have  to  be  revised,  and  their 
failure  in  any  case  to  account  for  the  peculiar  collocations  of 
the  agents  whose  procedure  they  formulate. 

Ward's  criticism  does  not  identify  itself  unambiguously  with 
either  of  these  methods;  indeed  it  is  not  easy  to  determine  at 
times  to  just  what  issue  it  is  pointed.  On  the  whole,  it  gives 
the  impression  of  being  negative  and  destructive,  and  of  leav- 
ing the  notion  of  scientific  law  in  a  state  of  bad  repair;  and 
yet  Ward  plainly  intends  no  disrespect  to  science,  but  only 
to  some  of  its  philosophical  interpreters.  The  trouble  is 
probably  due  in  the  main  to  a  failure  to  draw  sharply  enough 
the  lines  of  division  between  scientific  methodology  and 
metaphysics.  What  Ward  most  explicitly  denies  is  the  right 
to  interpret  the  real  world  ultimately  in  terms  of  mechanistic 
concepts;  and  his  method  of  doing  this  is  by  arguing  that 
the  laws  of  quantitative  and  descriptive  science  are  not 
actual  transcriptions  of  reality,  but  hypothetical  devices,  se- 
lective and 'partial  in  their  nature,  for  the  securing  of  intel- 
lectual and  practical  control  over  a  world  unmanageable  in 
its  full  complexity.  What  is  real  in  its  own  right,  we  only 
come  in  contact  with  in  concrete  and  sensuous  experience;  and 
since,  as  a  psychologist.  Ward  had  found  experience  to  be 
fundamentally  conative  in  its  nature,  teleology  and  purpose 
cannot  be  driven  from  the  universe  by  mechanism,,  itself  only 
one  of  the  tools  which  purposes  employ.  So  far  there  is  nothing 
to  make  it  necessary  to  suppose  that  this  ultimate  metaphysical 
interpretation  is  intended  to  compete  with  science,  or  to  enter 
into  scientific  explanations.  But  apparently  Ward  does  intend 
to  draw  this  last  conclusion  also ;  and  accordingly  his  disparage- 
ment of  mechanistic  concepts  does  not  stop  with  their  philo- 
sophical pretensions,  but  extends  to  their  scientific  use  as  well. 
Not  only  is  there  no  logical  necessity  attaching  to  the  notion 
of  mechanical  law,  but  in  point  of  fact  such  law  breaks  down 
at  many  points  even  in  its  application  to  inorganic  nature,  is 


James  Ward  331 

helpless  before  the  problems  of  qualitative  difference  and  of 
origin,  and  has  explicitly  to  be  supplemented  by  the  teleological 
category  when  we  turn  to  biology  and  psychology. 

The  dispute  here  is  one  for  scientists  to  settle;  meanwhile 
it  may  be  pointed  out  that  Ward's  position  is  unnecessarily 
complicated  by  the  failure  to  make  sufficiently  clear  an  obvious 
distinction.  There  are  scientific  concepts — the  concept  of  an 
atom  for  example — of  which  it  is  possible  to  claim  that  they 
are  mere  conveniences  to  the  imagination  in  our  efforts  at 
description,  without  running  any  risk  of  interfering  in  the  real 
business  of  science;  whether  they  are  fictions  or  realities  is  a 
fair  question  for  the  philosopher  to  investigate,  but  in  either 
case  their  practical  value  is  much  the  same.  But  it  is  danger- 
ous to  use  similar  language  of  the  actual  quantitative  laws  of 
science.  These  are  "selective,"  but  they  do  not  seem  to  be 
"fictitious";  for  unless  they  formulate,  however  imperfectly, 
relationships  actually  present  in  reality,  how  could  they  have 
any  show  of  working?  It  is  not  probable  that  Ward  really  in- 
tends to  deny  this.  But  through  failure  to  emphasize  the 
necessary  discrimination,  he  sometimes  appears  to  do  so;  and 
indeed,  when  we  turn  to  the  metaphysical  aspects  of  his  pan- 
psychism,  it  even  becomes  doubtful  whether  this  is  not  the 
logical  issue  of  his  doctrine,  and  whether  a  world  of  pysches 
is  competent  to  sustain  that  intricate  network  of  exact  quanti- 
tative relations  which  scientific  law  presupposes. 

6.  Ward's  proof  of  panpsychism  follows  in  general  the  cus- 
tomary lines.  By  a  variety  of  considerations — the  demands 
of  the  principle  of  continuity  in  natural  evolution,  the  inherent 
plausibility  of  an  hypothesis  which  looks  to  the  sort  of  reality 
we  know  immediately  as  a  clue  to  the  nature  of  reality  at  large, 
the  difficulty  of  solving  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  mind  and 
body  on  a  dualistic  view — we  are  led  to  the  acceptance  of  con- 
sciousness as  the  omnipresent  stuff  of  which  natural  objects  are 
the  appearance.  Just  what  physical  facts  reveal  the  presence 
of  an  individual  unity  of  spirit,  it  is  not  px>ssible  or  necessary 


332        English  and  American  Philosophy 

always  to  determine,  though  in  man,  the  self  seems  in  its  ex- 
ternal appearance  to  be  identified  with  the  nervous  system. 
More  specifically,  we  are  to  conceive  of  the  central  self  or 
monad  as  the  head  of  a  group  of  lesser  monads  in  the  organism, 
to  which  it  has  a  peculiar  and  direct  relationship  of  spiritual 
"rapport."  Meanwhile  these  inferior  monads  also  stand  re- 
lated to  still  others  outside  the  body;  and  this  explains  how 
reports  of  an  external  world  can  come  to  the  self,  and  how  its 
commands  can  get  executed  in  this  world,  without  its  having 
any  consciousness  of  the  intervening  processes.  The  relation 
is  similar  to  that  which  the  citizen  has  to  the  various  officials 
of  the  state,  of  whose  methods  in  his  service  he  may  be  in 
entire  ignorance.^ 

7.  The  special  purpose  of  Ward's  later  volume,  The  Realm 
of  Ends,  is  to  erect  a  spiritualistic  theism  on  the  basis  of  this 
panpsychist  interpretation.  Accepting  the  methodological 
principle  that  any  possible  philosophy  must  start  from  the 
empirical  fact  of  the  finite  self,  and  that  a  monism  which  at- 
tempts to  reverse  the  process  can  never  logically  get  back  to 
the  finite  world  at  all,  an  essay  is  first  made  to  see  how  far  a 
metaphysical  pluralism  can  go  in  the  way  of  accounting  for 
the  objective  order  of  the  world,  conceived  as  the  evolutionary 
construct  of  finite  beings  striving  for  self-realization,  and  gradu- 
ally creating  what  we  know  phenomenally  as  scientific  law — 
which  is  nothing  but  the  routine  of  acquired  habit — as  a  means 
of  social  communication  and  cooperation.  The  conclusion  is, 
however,  that  a  thoroughgoing  pluralism  leaves  something  still 
to  be  desired  both  at  its  lower  and  its  upper  limit.  In  terms 
of  origins,  it  carries  us  back  to  monads  of  a  degree  of  in- 
determinateness  so  great  as  to  make  the  process  of  evolution, 
^the  evolution  of  a  unity  in  no  sense  there  at  the  start, — 
very  hard  to  conceive;  and  also  it  offers  no  guarantee  that  the 
moral  and  spiritual  ideals  in  which  the  final  meaning  of  the 
process  lies  can  ever  be  satisfactorily  attained.  A  doctrine  of 
'  The  Realm  of  Ends,  pp.  256  £f.,  461  £f. 


James  Ward  333 

theism  which  supplements  finite  monads  by  a  world-groimd  to 
whose  creative  activity  their  nature,  as  themselves  free  and 
creative  agents,  is  due,  which  offers  an  already  existing  basis 
to  sustain  their  intercourse,  and  which  can  assure  the  final 
triumph  of  the  good,  is,  therefore,  in  the  absence  of  difficulties 
fatal  to  the  conception,  a  plausible  and  legitimate  extension 
of  pluralistic  premises,  though  it  can  never  be  rationally  demon- 
strated. 

8.  It  has  seemed  most  reasonable  on  the  whole  to  interpret 
Ward^s  system  as  consistently  theistic  and  pluralistic;  though 
there  are  aspects  of  it  which  it  is  not  easy  to  distinguish  at 
times  from  such  an  absolutism  as  that  of  Pringle-Pattison.  In 
one  respect,  however,  he  is  even  less  "realistic"  than  certain  of 
the  monists.  Ward  conceives  that  a  theory  of  knowledge  which 
is  to  justify  his  results  must  start  from  a  repudiation  of  "dual- 
ism"; it  is  a  question  whether,  on  the  contrary,  he  is  not  in 
this  way  making  them  logically  insecure.  Now  dualism  has 
several  quite  distinct  meanings,  which  it  is  easy,  but  dangerous, 
to  lump  together.  It  may  mean  a  dualism  of  kind  between 
mind  and  matter;  and  this  is  the  only  thing  that  idealism  as 
such  is  interested  to  deny.  Or  it  may  mean  a  dualism  of 
existence  between  the  thinking  mind  and  the  object  which  it 
knows, — epistemological  dualism.  Or,  finally,  it  may  mean  a 
dualism  of  existence  between  consciousness  and  the  brain, — 
which  last  is  of  course  not  the  "object"  of  knowledge;  and  this 
is  the  particular  issue  for  panpsychism  in  the  form  in  which 
Ward  among  others  accepts  it.  Now  in  urging  monism  in  the 
first  and  third  senses.  Ward  appears  to  suppose  that  he  must 
hold  it  in  the  second  sense  as  well.  But  not  only  is  there  no 
necessity  for  this;  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  it  can  be  done  con- 
sistently with  a  panpsychist  metaphysics.  For  panpsychism 
holds  that  there  is  an  actual  reality  underlying  what  appears 
to  us  phenomenally  as  the  world  of  nature — the  reality  of 
psychic  beings,  namely;  and,  supposedly,  that  there  are  at 
least  some  relationships  existing  among  these  monads  which  are 


334       English  and  American  Philosophy 

duplicated  in  our  scientific  concepts.  And  unless,  with  ob- 
jective idealism,  we  identify  finite  knowing  with  the  Absolute, 
all  this  involves  a  necessary  duality  between  knowledge  and  its 
object. 

In  denying  this  sort  of  dualism.  Ward  involves  himself  in  the 
traditional  difficulties  present  in  an  attempt  to  evolve  knowl- 
edge out  of  what  is  not  knowledge.  "Objectivity,"  following 
the  prevalent  fashion  among  idealists.  Ward  undertakes  to  ac- 
count for,  not  as  a  reference  to  independent  being,  but  as  an 
ideal  convention  due  to  intersubjective  intercourse.  To  recog- 
nize these  related  selves,  however,  implies  also  objectivity  in 
a  different  sense;  and  if  our  knowledge  is  originally  tied  up  to 
merely  perceptual  presentations,  which  involve  no  independent 
world,  how  do  we  come  to  possess  this  acquaintance  with  social 
"ejects"?  To  this  very  crucial  step  Ward  devotes  a  couple  of 
sentences,^  and  we  find  ourselves  thereupon  engaged  with  con- 
siderations of  what  follows  on  the  assumption  that  the  step 
already  has  been  safely  taken.  And  even  thus  we  have  not  yet 
got  all  that  panpsychism  requires.  If  the  universe  on  which 
for  science  human  life  depends  is  but  a  schematic  formulation 
of  the  points  in  common  between  the  various  experiences  which 
the  social  life  presupposes,  it  fails  altogether  to  carry  us  to  that 
vast  world  of  lower  selves  with  which  we  are  not  conscious  of 
having  any  direct  social  relation.  The  theoretical  need  which 
sub-human  monads  are  supposed  to  fill,  implies  that  we  already 
are  convinced  of  the  actual  presence  of  an  independent  reality 
corresponding  to  the  physical  world,  whose  nature  we  then  try 
more  adequately  to  interpret;  and  if  this  assumption  is  a  mis- 
take, and  only  a  misreading  of  our  recognition  of  identities  in 
the  experience  of  beings  already  in  our  social  c'rcle,  no  ground 
for  the  extension  of  the  panpsychist  hypothesis  is  apparent. 

9.  That  Ward  fails  to  feel  such  difficulties  as  serious  is  due 
mainly  to  a  conception  of  "experience"  which  he  shares  with 
many  modern  philosophers  of  various  schools,  but  which  by 
^Naturalism  and  Agnosticism,  Vol.  II,  p.  165. 


James  Ward  335 

others  will  be  regarded  as  a  liability  rather  than  an  asset.  Ex- 
perience, namely,  is  not  to  be  thought  of  as  a  subjective  fact. 
What  we  have  from  the  very  start  is  a  duality  of  subject  and 
object  in  a  unity  of  experience;  and  in  consequence,  the  need  of 
escaping  from  subjectivity  never  occurs.  On  the  interpreta- 
tion however  which  Ward  goes  on  to  give  to  this,  the  solution 
turns  out  to  be  a  verbal  one.  For  this  unity  of  experience 
is  recognized  after  all  as  identified  with  the  psychological  life 
of  an  individual,  and  the  object  as  only  a  psychological  presen- 
tation; and  that  experience  starts  as  perception,  rather  than  as 
bare  feeling,  may  be  granted  without  appreciably  affecting  the 
real  problem,  which  is  that  of  understanding  how  we  get  to 
something  that  is  not  in  any  sense  the  content  of  an  individual 
life.  An  object  which  is  a  perceptual  presentation  is  still  a  per- 
ception of  miney  and  so  after  all  subjective  in  the  only  sense 
that  here  comes  in  question. 

10.  The  merits  of  panpsychism  itself,  as  a  type  of  philo- 
sophical theory,  are  not  easy  to  appraise  in  brief.  It  has  called 
forth  a  large  controversial  literature;  perhaps  special  mention 
should  be  made  of  William  McDougall's  Mind  and  Matter, 
which  is  noteworthy  for  the  thoroughness  and  detail  alike  of 
its  criticisms,  and  of  its  defence  of  the  unpopular  alternative 
theory  of  interactionism  and  "animism."  Undoubtedly  the 
first  reaction  of  the  unsophisticated  mind  to  an  interpretation 
of  the  physical  world  in  terms  of  souls  or  mind-stuff,  for  the 
most  part  unimaginably  obscure,  is  that  of  incredulity;  and 
this  natural  feeling  has  its  weight,  though  it  ought  not  to  hold 
out  against  strong  reason.  A  more  serious  matter  is  the  ques- 
tion to  what  extent  such  a  reinterpretation  of  the  natural  world 
can  adjust  itself  to  the  needs  of  scientific  knowledge.  The 
most  thorough  and  candid  attempt  to  meet  the  various  objec- 
tions that  can  be  brought  here,  is  to  be  found  in  the  writings 
of  C.  A.  Strong;  though  this  attempt  leads  to  a  remodeling  of 
the  conception  which  would  not  be  accepted  by  the  majority  of 
panpsychists. 


336       English  and  American  Philosophy 

Strong's  metaphysical  conclusions  are  dependent  on  the  ap- 
parently paradoxical  thesis  that  the  "psychic"  is  as  such  not 
conscious.  The  term  consciousness,  that  is,  is  identified  with 
''knowledge";  and  knowledge  is  not  an  entity,  a  thing  or 
quality,  but  a  function,  which  need  not  be  bound  up  with 
psychic  existence.  It  is  this  which,  to  begin  with,  renders 
accountable  what  otherwise  would  involve  a  miracle — the 
origin  of  consciousness  or  knowledge  in  the  evolutionary  proc- 
ess; consciousness  is  not  a  fact  of  existence  which  comes  into 
being,  but  a  way  in  which,  through  the  medium  of  sensation 
or  psychic  reality,  adjustment  is  made  to  the  environment.  Ac- 
cording to  this  "vehicular"  theory  of  knowledge,  knowing  has 
two  a^ects;  there  is  an  "essence"  of  which  the  psychic  sen- 
sation or  image  is  the  vehicle,  and  there  is  an  act  of  affirma- 
tion by  which  this  essence,  or  logical  character,  is  referred  to 
a  reality  in  relation  to  the  organism.  It  follows  that  the  object 
which  we  know  is  not  a  phenomenal  representation  in  con- 
sciousness for  which  an  external  cause  is  secondarily  inferred; 
in  the  act  of  affirmation  we  are  carried  over  directly  to  a  non- 
subjective  real,  in  which  the  essence  is  conceived  to  be  em- 
bodied. And  since  this  act  of  knowledge  is,  again,  not  itself  a 
new  qualitative  kind  of  fact,  but  a  bodily  function  in  terms 
of  the  way  in  which  sensation  is  used  to  guide  the  course  of 
action,  we  can  see  how  it  is  possible  for  it  to  arise  in  the  proc- 
ess of  evolution  without  our  having  anything  new  in  kind 
on  our  hands  to  account  for. 

II.  Another  difficulty  for  panpsychism,  urged  by  Mc- 
Dougall,  is  to  the  effect  that  a  universe  of  mind-stuff  makes 
no  provision  for  the  tmity  of  consciousness.  Strong  meets  this 
objection  by  denying  the  supposed  fact;  the  only  unity  of  con- 
sciousness is  that  of  a  collection  of  data  picked  out  by  an  act 
of  cognitive  attention,  which  act  itself  is  not  a  single  thing, 
but  is  analyzable,  as  a  bodily  reaction,  into  a  complex  series 
of  processes.  What  however  of  the  elementary  psychic  fact 
itself?     Is  not  at  least  a  sensation-quality  a  unity?     Here 


C.  A.  Strong  337 

the  vehicular  theory  of  knowledge  comes  in  again.  The  intro- 
spective knowledge  of  a  psychic  state,  equally  with  knowledge 
of  outer  objects,  dispenses  with  the  actual  presence  of  the 
reality  which  is  known;  it  is  a  subsequent  act  which  refers  an 
essence  to  an  experience  already  in  the  past.  Since  conscious- 
ness or  feeling,  therefore,  does  not  belong  to  the  psychical  fact 
as  such,  but  is,  as  always,  a  superadded  function,  we  cannot 
appeal  to  it  as  if  it  could  tell  us  infadlibly  what  the  psychic 
reality  is;  theoretically  there  is  no  reason  why  here,  as  else- 
where, our  knowledge  may  not  be  in  error,  and  why  what 
seems  a  simple  quality  may  not  actually  be  exceedingly  com- 
plex. This  argument,  it  is  true,  assumes  that  consciousness  as 
the  way  a  feeling  feels,  and  consciousness  as  the  way  it  is  re- 
flectively known,  are  one  and  the  same;  and  this  seems  a  very 
doubtful  assumption.  But  if  the  identification  is  granted,  then 
it  does  logically  weaken  the  claim  that  the  psychical  is  only 
what  we  feel  it  to  be,  and  so  opens  the  way  for  giving  con- 
sideration to  certain  reasons  that  can  be  adduced  in  favor  of 
the  belief  that  what  we  call  a  unitary  conscious  quality  may 
actually  be  far  from  simple.  Strong  is  especially  inclined  to 
welcome  this  conclusion,  because  it  enables  him  to  meet  one 
point  in  particular  which  otherwise  would  be  a  serious  ob- 
jection to  his  theory — the  discrepancy  between  the  apparent 
simplicity  of  the  sense  fact,  and  the  extreme  complexity  which 
science  reveals  to  us  in  the  brain  process  which,  by  hypothesis, 
is  supposed  to  be  identical  with  it.  If,  however,  qualities  of 
sense  are  not  simple,  but  are  in  reality  a  compound  of  indefi- 
nitely minute  feelings,  which  appear  one  to  introspection  only 
because  of  our  limited  powers  of  discrimination,  the  objection 
disappears.^ 

12.    One  doubt  is  very  likely  to  suggest  itself  when  we  con- 
template this  outcome;  in  the  supposed  interests  of  reducing 
reality  to  the  psychical,  have  we  not  turned  the  psychical  itself 
into  what  only  a  considerable  degree  of  subtlety  enables  us  to 
^The  Origin  of  Consciousness,  Chaps.  13,  i."?,  16. 


338       English  and  American  Philosophy 

distinguish  from  the  physical?  The  ultimate  element  which 
underlies  the  psychical  life  is  an  entity  about  which,  it  ap- 
pears, all  that  we  can  say  with  confidence  is,  that  it  exists  in 
time  and  space,  that  it  changes  its  spatial  position,  and  that  it 
has  degrees  of  attentive  vividness  or  intensity.  This  last 
character  is,  as  Strong  allows,  the  only  one  in  the  list  which 
prevents  our  calling  the  result  materialism,  and  it  is  also  the 
most  obscure  and  dubious;  vividness  apart  from  qualitative 
content  is  not  quite  easy  to  conceive.  Whatever  name  we 
choose  however  to  give  to  our  ultimate  elements,  the  essential 
fact  remains  that  in  excluding  from  the  psychic  all  specific 
characters  which  are  not  common  to  every  psychical  state 
alike.  Strong's  panpsychism,  like  materialism,  ends  by  turning 
qualitative  differences  out  of  the  universe  altogether;  if  all 
reality  is  a  combination  of  non-qualitative  bits  of  stuff,  and 
consciousness  and  the  "essence"  only  a  bodily  reaction,  sense 
quality  as  such  has  no  locus  anywhere,  and  we  have  simply 
to  deny  it — always  a  hazardous  thing  to  do. 

13.  Meanwhile  one  further  point  may  be  suggested  which, 
if  it  is  valid  at  all,  applies  to  all  forms  of  panpsychism  alike. 
A  sensation,  we  have  been  told,  is  the  reality  which  to  an  out- 
side observer  will  appear  phenomenally  as  a  material  brain  proc- 
ess; is  it  possible  to  imagine  this  situation  concretely  in  a  way 
to  satisfy  that  demand  of  science  from  which  the  theory  really 
takes  its  start — the  demand  for  a  closed  system  of  reality 
capable  of  description  in  terms  of  mechanical  law?  I  have  a 
sensation  of  red,  we  will  say,  and  another  man  on  getting  into 
the  proper  relationship  to  this  will  see  it  as  a  physical  change 
of  some  sort  in  my  brain.  And  all  the  other  real  facts  in  the 
universe  he  conceivably  might  perceive  under  the  same  physical 
appearance  as  continuous  with  this,  with  one  exception — ^his 
own  conscious  state  of  perceiving,  namely.  This  last,  while 
he  is  experiencing  it,  cannot  in  the  nature  of  the  case  enter 
for  him  into  the  continuum  of  molecular  changes  which  forms 
the  system  of  science,  and  so  it  constitutes  an  outstanding  fact 


C.  A,  Strong  339 

that  refuses  to  accept  phenomenal  or  scientific  formulae.  Even 
if  it  were  conceivable  that  by  some  ingenious  device  I  could 
be  enabled  to  watch  my  own  brain  process  while  I  was  sensing 
red,  I  still  should  not  be  looking  at  the  new  perception  which 
this  would  involve;  no  matter  how  long  I  kept  it  up,  that  which 
I  see,  and  my  seeing  it,  could  never  merge  one  in  the  other, 
because  they  never  would  be  the  same  in  character.  And  if 
it  is  urged  that  while  no  one  can  see  his  own  mental  process 
while  it  is  happening,  he  can  think  it,  and  so  take  it  up  ideally 
into  a  unified  scientific  whole,  the  answer  is  the  same;  to 
think  the  reality  representatively  there  must  first  be  a  new 
thought  to  do  the  thinking.  It  is  this  thought  now  that  stands 
outside  the  system  as  concretely  imaginable;  if  we  try  to  bring 
it  in,  there  must  be  still  another  thought;  and  so  always  the 
chain  of  phenomenal  reality  is  bound  to  leave  one  fact  outside, 
and  the  perfect  imity  of  science  fails  to  be  achieved. 


§  3.    Realism.    Shadworth  Hodgson.    Hob  house.    Santayana 

I.  The  preceding  sections  have  had  in  view  primarily  cer- 
tain developments  of  philosophical  idealism;  there  remain  to 
be  considered  here  a  number  of  tendencies  that  may  roughly 
be  characterized  as  realistic,  though  the  term  is  so  ambiguous 
that  by  itself  it  conveys  no  very  distinct  idea.  It  can  be 
applied  more  strictly  to  theories  which  accept  the  reality  of 
the  physical  universe  in  something  like  its  common-sense  or 
its  scientific  form.  In  a  different  sense  however, — as  an  episte- 
mological  term, — realism  means  only  that  in  knowledge  we 
become  acquainted  with  reality  other  than  the  knowing  proc- 
ess, leaving  it  to  be  determined  in  further  ways  what  the 
nature  of  this  reality  may  be. 

This  epistemological  realism,  usually  with  the  implication  of 
a  dualism,  has  been  involved  in  a  majority  of  the  idealistic 
tendencies  just  reviewed,  though  for  the  most  part  it  has  been 


340       English  and  American  Philosophy 

subordinate  here  to  a  metaphysical  interest.  Quite  recently, 
however,  it  has  shown  a  disposition  to  detach  itself  from  meta- 
physics, and  to  give  rise  to  a  brisk  discussion  in  its  own 
character  as  a  theory  of  knowledge.  The  most  influential  de- 
fender of  an  epistemological  realism  which  refuses  to  abandon 
the  belief  in  "mental  states,"  is  the  psychologist  G.  F.  Stout. 
Stout's  theory  of  perception  has  been  modified  from  time  to 
time;  in  its  latest  form  it  holds  that  immediately  apprehended 
sensibles  carry  with  them  always  an  ultimate  and  undefinable 
sort  of  reference  to  reality  beyond  themselves  as  their  source. 
This  reference,  however,  is  to  the  whole  source  indiscriminately, 
the  correlation  of  given  qualities  with  a  definite  portion  of 
reality,  so  that  this  becomes  a  particular  thing  distinguished 
from  other  things,  being  a  secondary  act  due  to  discoverable 
psychological  conditions;  and  in  this  way  accordingly  we  are 
enabled  to  explain  the  presence  of  errors  and  illusions,  with- 
out casting  any  doubt  upon  the  validity  of  the  ultimate  refer- 
ence itself.  Apparently,  however,  these  sensibles  are  not  to 
be  taken  as  if  they  revealed  a  nature  belonging  to  the  source 
in  the  absence  of  perception;  though  they  constitute  its  true 
appearance  in  the  sense  that  they  represent  the  way  in  which 
it  expresses  itself  under  assignable  conditions.^  A  later  vari- 
ation of  a  realistic  epistemology  has  already  been  mentioned 
in  connection  with  the  panpsychism  of  C.  A.  Strong.  The  dis- 
tinctive point  in  Strong^s  "vehicular"  theory  is  its  unqualified 
repudiation  of  the  assumption  that  we  first  know  sensations 
or  internal  presentations  and  then  make  an  inference  from 
them  to  the  external  cause,  and  its  substitution  of  abstract 
characters  or  essences  for  concrete  presentations,  as  that  which 
alone  is  immediately  apprehended.  Recently  there  has  ap- 
peared a  cooperative  volume  called  Essays  in  Critical  Realism, 
by  a  number  of  American  writers  of  whom  Strong  is  one,  in 
which,  though  with  modifications  in  detail  in  the  various  es- 
says, there  is  agreement  on  the  point  that  the  known  object 
*  Proceedings  of  the  Aristotelian  Society,  Vol.  XIV,  pp.  381  ff.,  404  f. 


Physical  Realism  341 

is  not  identically  given  in  experience,  and  that  nevertheless  the 
reference  to  it  is  original,  and  not  a  causal  inference. 

2.  Meanwhile,  though  more  infrequently, — apart,  that  is, 
from  the  special  developments  of  neo-realism  to  be  considered 
in  another  chapter, — a  realistic  theory  of  knowledge  is  com- 
bined in  some  recent  writers  with  a  physical  realism  more  or 
less  explicit.-  An  ontological  dualism,  resting  on  a  dualistic 
epistemology  which  follows  the  traditional  lines  of  the  "repre- 
sentative" theory,  has  never  ceased  to  maintain  itself  against 
all  types  of  monism  in  Catholic  philosophy,  whose  revival  in  the 
neo-scholasticism  of  recent  times  is  a  significant  philosophical 
tendency;  ^  and  a  not  dissimilar  combination  is  sometimes 
found  where  the  influence  of  Scottish  common  sense  still  per- 
sists, though  the  account  of  knowledge  here  is  apt  to  be  modi- 
fied in  the  direction  of  Kant.  Thus  Henry  Sidgwick  may  be 
mentioned  in  particular  as  inclining  to  a  natural  dualism  which 
conceives  of  objectively  valid  knowledge  in  terms  of  relation- 
ships attributed  to  an  independent  reality  by  the  knowing  mind. 
In  other  cases  realism  is  accompanied  by  a  still  more  sophisti- 
cated epistemology,  which  at  times  might  probably  be  classi- 
fied as  neo-realistic.  Here  belongs,  for  example,  the  Physical 
Realism  of  Thomas  Case.  On  the  assumption  that  a  theory 
of  knowledge  is  called  upon  to  find  a  way  of  accounting  for 
the  accredited  testimony  of  science,  rather  than  to  deduce  the 
possibiHties  of  knowledge  from  human  nature,  the  fact  that 
science  puts  its  trust  in  a  world  inaccessible  to  the  senses  is 
by  itself  enough  to  set  aside  an  idealism  such  as  would  reduce 
knowledge  to  sensations.  On  the  other  hand.  Case  takes  for 
granted  that  biology  has  undermined  the  naive  realism  which 
supposes  that  we  Imow  directly  outer  things,  by  showing  that, 
instead,  the  first  objects  of  knowledge  are  the  sensible  effects 
which  things  have  upon  the  inner  organism.    When  we  say  that 

*  Among  Catholic  philosophers  may  be  mentioned  Peter  Coffey, 
Thomas  N.  Harper,  Howard  Joyce,  Michael  Maher,  John  Rickaby,  and 
Lester  J.  Walker. 


342        English  and  American  Philosophy 

we  perceive  a  tree,  this  perception  is  in  reality  an  inference 
from  sensible  data,  though  an  inference  so  long  performed  auto- 
matically that  we  cannot  now  disengage  it.  But  now  if  ex- 
ternal objects  can  be  scientifically  inferred  from  sensible  data, 
it  must  be  that  these  data  are  themselves  not  psychical,  but 
physical,  since  in  logic  an  inference  can  pass  only  to  what  is 
similar  in  kind.  The  true  sensible  object  is  thus  the  nervous 
S)rstem  itself;  when  I  am  apprehending  "white,"  I  am  really 
perceiving  the  optic  nerves  sensibly  affected  in  the  manner 
apprehended  as  white.  And  if  an  external  and  physical  world 
can  properly  be  inferred  as  something  necessary  to  explain  the 
internal — but  still  physical — effect  on  the  nervous  system,  so 
I  have  an  equal  right  to  infer  to  the  insensible  realm  of  scien- 
tific theory, — a  realm  stripped  now  of  secondary  qualities, 
though  not  of  primary  ones, — if  this  in  turn  is  needed  to  ex- 
plain the  crude  physical  objects  of  empirical  sense  perception. 
Meanwhile  the  sensible  object  needs  to  be  distinguished  not 
only  from  its  external  cause,  but  also,  on  the  other  hand,  from 
the  internal  operation  of  apprehending  it;  and  it  is  this  last 
alone  which  constitutes  the  psychical.  Two  factors,  accord- 
ingly, combine  in  all  conscious  operations;  man  is  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  physical  body  which  is  not  merely  an  extended 
substance,  but  which  has  the  faculty  of  thought  or  awareness 
as  well.  In  thus  reducing  consciousness  to  an  act  of  awareness 
of  physical  content,  Case  anticipates  the  most  characteristic 
doctrine  of  later  English  neo-realism;  the  contention  however 
that  this  awareness,  as  a  peculiar  relation  of  subject  to  object, 
is  directly  of  events  within  the  nervous  system,  events  actually 
characterized  by  secondary  qualities  which  have  as  such  no 
existence  outside  the  organism,  has  apparently  found  no  fol- 
lowers. 

Another  more  recent  attempt  to  justify  realistically  the 
concepts  of  physical  science  .is  C.  D.  Broad's  Perception, 
Physics,  and  Reality,  an  acute  and  very  painstaking  examina- 


Physical  Realism  343 

tion  of  the  perceptual  situation,  of  which  the  outcome  is,  that 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  immediate  objects  of  perception  are 
probably  all  appearances,  nothing  in  the  facts  of  illusion,  or  in 
the  multiplicity  of  perspectives  in  which  objects  reveal  them- 
selves to  different  observers,  prevents  our  believing  in  a  non- 
phenomenal  cause  of  our  perceptions,  possessing  a  knowable 
nature  in  terms  of  the  particular  characters  needed  by  physical 
science.  In  America,  also,  R.  W.  Sellars  has  defended  a  realis- 
tic account  of  knowledge  which  attempts  to  avoid  alike  the 
immediate  or  apprehensional  theory  of  natural  realism,  and 
a  dualistic  or  representational  theory,  by  the  process  of  re- 
ducing cognitive  "ideas"  to  an  apprehension  of  ''propositions" 
— apparently,  that  is,  of  "relations"  not  identifiable  with  sen- 
sations or  imagery — about  an  independent  real.  Here  con- 
sciousness is  made  explicitly  a  function  of  the  physical;  it  is 
the  reality  of  the  cortex  illuminating  and  guiding  itself.  An- 
other American  representative  of  realism  is  G.  S.  Fullerton, 
who  in  his  later  writings  defends  the  world  of  everyday  ex- 
perience, including  even  secondary  qualities,  as  independently 
real,  though  he  leaves  the  mechanism  of  knowledge  somewhat 
obscure. 

3.  There  remain  several  recent  philosophies  of  a  more  com- 
prehensive and  systematic  sort,  which  in  view  of  their  realistic 
emphasis  belong  most  naturally  in  this  connection.  Of  these 
the  earliest,  and  the  most  difficult  to  classify  satisfactorily,  is 
that  of  Shadworth  Hodgson.  Hodgson  sets  out  from  a  con- 
ception of  metaphysical  method  which  is  a  peculiar  compound 
of  logic  and  psychology  not  easy  to  disentangle.  He  professes 
to  start  from  an  analysis  of  experience  wholly  without  pre- 
suppositions. Now  the  most  ultimate  distinction  that  we  thus 
discover — and  we  find  it  in  the  simplest  possible  element  of 
experience  that  we  can  isolate  and  attend  to  by  itself — is,  not 
that  of  Subject  and  Object, — of  an  agent,  that  is,  separable 
from  the  thing  it  knows,  and  exercising  causal  efficiency, — but 


344       English  and  American  Philosophy 

of  Consciousness  and  Object,  as  two  inseparable  aspects  of 
one  and  the  same  ultimate  entity,  from  which  all  distinctions 
of  existence  must  be  derived  in  some  later  moment  of  reflection. 
If  we  attempt  to  interpret  these  statements,  what  stands  out 
most  plainly  is  this,  that  Hodgson's  method  takes  its  start,  not, 
as  previous  empiricism  had  done,  from  experience  as  sensational 
fact,  but  from  an  analysis  of  its  logical  characters.  It  attempts 
to  presuppose  only  the  "whatness"  of  experienced  content,  as 
distinct  from  its  "thatness"  or  existence.  This  is  not  the  di- 
rection in  which  we  should  be  first  inclined  to  turn;  it  seems 
rather  more  natural  to  suppose  that  the  "natures"  present  in 
the  world  are  capable  of  being  held  before  the  mind  in  their 
logical  simplicity,  only  because  "things"  have  first  been  recog- 
nized which  possess  these  natures;  "logical"  facts  seem  to  pre- 
suppose already  a  considerable  work  of  analysis.  And  also 
the  inevitable  question  at  once  arises,  whether  this  does  not 
leave  on  our  hands  an  insoluble  problem;  is  it  any  more  pos- 
sible to  make  the  transition  from  logic  to  existence,  if  we  once 
start  with  the  former,  than  it  is  to  begin  with  psychology,  and 
pass  to  an  existence  independent  of  consciousness?  There  is 
indeed  one  possible  interpretation  of  the  method  for  which 
the  difficulty  would  not  exist.  It  might  be  that  we  are  simply 
taking  over  our  existing  beliefs,  and  analyzing  them  to  see  what 
they  really  are,  or  imply;  in  that  case  existence  will  undoubtedly 
emerge,  since  we  do  of  course  believe  in  existence.  On  this 
showing,  the  inseparability  of  consciousness  and  object  would 
mean — and  there  are  frequent  utterances  of  Hodgson,  indeed, 
which  suggest  this  strongly— only  that  all  content  which  we 
can  talk  about  at  all  is  known  content,  reality  that  is  not  a  pos- 
sible object  of  knowledge  being  meaningless  to  us, — this  ab- 
stract and  ultimate  fact  of  awareness  being  distinguishable,  of 
course,  only  as  a  matter  of  logical  analysis  from  the  whatness 
of  knowledge.  And  the  metaphysical  priority  of  a  logical 
analysis  to  any  science  that  deals  with  existence  would  then 
mean,  that  the  validity  of  objective  content,  or  whatness,  is 


Shadworth  Hodgson  345 

independent  of  the  fact  that  the  knowing  process  arises  at  a 
particular  point  in  time,  and  has  a  momentary  existence.  But 
all  this  evidently  is  as  far  as  possible  from  a  philosophy  "with- 
out presuppositions";  and  it  is  mostly  irrelevant  to  Hodgson's 
actual  procedure. 

4.  The  way  in  which  Hodgson  himself  attempts  to  effect 
the  passage  from  logic  to  existence  is  exceedingly  ingenious. 
It  starts  from  the  thesis  that  the  least  possible  empirical 
moment  of  experience  is,  not  a  qualitative  content  simply,  but 
a  process  as  well;  we  find  it  a  complex  of  which  quality  and 
duration  are  inseparable  aspects.  And  this  duration  aspect  in- 
volves memory;  the  persistence  of  qualitative  content  means 
that  the  simplest  momentary  experience  always  contains  im- 
plicitly the  distinction  of  past  and  present.  Now  in  a  single 
moment, — in  the  experience,  say,  of  hearing  a  note.  A, — there 
is  no  recognition  of  duplicity.  But  if  A  be  followed  by  a 
second  note  B,  A  then  becomes,  by  virtue  of  the  fact  of  dura- 
tion or  memory,  a  "that"  as  well  as  a  "what";  the  later  por- 
tion of  the  process  continued  into  B  has  its  own  prior  portion, 
together  with  the  content  of  that  portion,  as  its  object,  from 
which  it  is  now  distinguished  as  a  subjective  perceiving.  The 
process-content  of  one  moment  is  thus  always  the  object  or 
objective  aspect  of  the  next  or  retrospective  moment;  and  this 
is  the  perception  of  existence  in  its  lowest  terms.^ 

It  seems  very  doubtful  whether  this  first  and  crucial  step 
in  Hodgson's  analysis  can  be  regarded  as  successful.  Even 
if — and  this  is  by  no  means  clear — the  logical  character  of 
duration  can  be  supposed  to  generate  the  psychological  act  of 
memory  or  perceiving — can  be  taken  as  the  equivalent  of  "con- 
sciousness,"— it  still  is  not  evident  how  "existence"  enters  in. 
That  we  can  be  aware  of  that  which  is  merely  a  "whatness," 
the  whole  analysis  presupposes;  and  there  appears  no  reason 
why  a  past  "what"  should  turn  thereupon  into  a  "that,"  as  a 
fact  of  a  new  order.  It  is  difficult  not  to  think  that  Hodgson 
*  Metaphysic  of  Experience,  Vol.  I,  pp.  ^g  ff. 


346        English  and  American  Philosophy 

imagines  himself  to  have  gotten  hold  of  "existence"  here,  only 
because  he  really  has  had  in  his  mind  all  along  something  more 
than  logical  content — the  sensation,  namely,  to  which  the 
"quality"  belongs.  This  of  course  is  an  existent;  but  it  is 
presupposed  to  be  such,  and  existence  has  not  been  deduced 
from  a  presuppositionless  content. 

And  in  any  case,  even  if  the  transition  be  regarded  as  ac- 
complished, Hodgson,  after  all  his  trouble,  still  is  left  with 
the  traditional  difficulties  of  empiricism  on  his  hands;  and 
his  method  from  now  on  becomes  the  familiar  attempt  to  de- 
rive a  cosmos  from  "states  of  consciousness."  His  account  of 
the  passage  from  objects  as  mental  presentations  to  objects 
as  physical  existents  ranks  high  among  similar  attempts  for 
ingenuity.^  Indeed  it  is  so  ingenious  as  to  inspire  great  respect 
for  the  primitive  intelligence  which  could  conduct  a  line  of 
reasoning  so  subtle  and  complicated  that  it  puts  a  strain  even 
on  the  philosophic  mind  to  follow  it.  But  in  the  end  it  gets 
its  way,  as  usual,  only  by  smuggling  in  the  point  to  be  es- 
tablished. Meanwhile  it  should  not  be  overlooked,  however, 
that  Hodgson's  treatment  has  at  least  a  distinct  advantage  over 
Kantian  idealism,  in  its  explicit  recognition  that  knowledge  as 
such  is  not  a  cause  or  ground  of  existence,  and  that  any  pos- 
sible analysis  in  terms  of  timeless  cognitive  content  must  be 
supplemented,  if  we  are  ever  to  come  into  contact  with  the 
real  world  of  agents  which  common  sense  and  science  alike 
presuppose. 

5.  Apart  from  the  ambiguities  of  his  method,  the  general 
outcome  of  Hodgson's  philosophy  is  comparatively  straight- 
forward. The  only  real  condition  or  agency  with  which  we  are 
acquainted  is  matter.  Consciousness  itself  is  a  condition  neither 
of  matter,  nor  of  other  conscious  content;  and  when  we  turn 
therefore  to  psychology  as  a  science,  it  is  to  the  body  alone 
that  we  can  appeal  for  purposes  of  causal  explanation.  But  it 
is  only  the  occurrence,  the  coming  into  existence,  of  conscious- 
'Ibid.,Wo\.  I,  Chaps.  7,  8. 


Shadworth  Hodgson  347 

ness  which  is  thus  explained;  matter  is  a  condition,  but  not 
a  cause,  if  we  mean  by  cause  something  capable  of  accounting 
for  the  entire  fact  of  consciousness,  including  its  ''whatness" 
also.  Consciousness  is  indeed  itself  the  source  from  which 
our  concrete  notion  of  matter  is  derived,  so  that  it  cannot  be 
explained  by  a  matter  whose  own  nature  is  given  in  terms  which 
it  supplies.  While,  then,  in  dealing  with  the  world  of  existences 
and  of  explanatory  science, — whose  aim  it  is  to  discover  the 
conditions  of  becoming,  and  not  of  essences, — Hodgson  is 
thoroughgoing  in  the  denial  of  any  efficacy  whatever  to  con- 
sciousness, the  nature  or  whatness  of  consciousness  is  an  ulti- 
mate fact,  which  brings  us  after  all  in  closer  contact  with  meta- 
physical reality  than  matter  does. 

Furthermore,  although  matter  is  the  only  real  condition 
knowable  by  us,  we  are  forced  by  the  demands  of  complete  ex- 
planation to  seek  for  matter  itself  a  more  ultimate  condition, 
since  it  is  not  self-explanatory;  and  so  we  are  pointed  to  an 
unseen  world  behind  the  visible  one.  The  nature  of  this  world 
is  cut  off  from  the  speculative  reason,  though  in  strictness  it 
is  not  unknowable;  for  if  the  very  notion  of  reality  is  bound 
up  with  knowability,  then  even  to  think  existence  means 
that  it  has  in  so  far  its  subjective  aspect,  since  it  forms  an 
object  of  thought.  What  we  mean  by  its  unknowableness  is 
only  that  its  direct  and  presentative  features  are  not  open  to 
our  special  type  of  consciousness;  although,  since  we  have  good 
dialectical  reason  to  accept  its  existence,  we  must  suppose  that 
there  is  consciousness  of  a  different  sort  that  does  know  them. 
But  while  thus  we  can  have  no  speculative  knowledge  of  the 
nature  of  this  invisible  universe  that  conditions  the  material 
one,  we  are  also  led  to  recognize  that  the  practical  reason, 
under  the  stress  of  emotional  feeling,  cannot  avoid  clothing 
it  in  the  only  imagery  at  its  disposal;  and  by  this  path  we 
are  forced  to  think  of  it  as  a  conscious  and  personal  Power 
such  as  knows  the  hidden  motives  of  the  heart,  and  in  whom 
the  perfect  harmony  of  desires  that  constitutes  the  criterion 


348        English  and  American  Philosophy 

of  morally  right  action  is,  or  will  be,  completely  realized.  And 
so  long  as  we  remember  that  this  has  no  speculative  validity, 
— though  it  has  its  necessary  cause  in  the  neural  processes 
which  condition  all  belief,— such  a  Faith,  as  the  basis  of 
the  religious  consciousness,  has  all  the  justification  it  requires.^ 
6.  In  somewhat  more  obvious  relation  to  earlier  English 
naturalism,  and  especially  to  J.  S.  Mill,  is  the  philosophical 
work  of  L.  T.  Hobhouse,  who  carries  on  Mill's  empiricism, 
and  his  political  liberalism  as  well,  with  something  of  the  same 
spirit  and  the  same  comprehensiveness.  In  Hobhouse,  how- 
ever, the  familiar  metaphysics  of  empiricism  is  very  materially 
modified.  To  begin  with,  the  doctrine  of  an  apprehension  of 
immediate  sense  content  or  fact,  apart  entirely  from  thought 
processes,  is  interpreted  as  from  the  start  an  awareness  or 
assertion  of  extra-conscious  reality.  As  a  matter  of  fact  there 
is  some  difficulty  in  gathering  from  Hobhouse's  treatment 
whether  there  is  such  a  thing  as  sensation  at  all  in  the  older 
empirical  sense,  and  if  there  is,  just  how  it  stands  related  to 
the  objective  content  of  knowledge  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
"act"  of  apprehension  on  the  other.  This  content  of  immediate 
apprehension  we  come  consciously  to  recognize  as  an  inde- 
pendent existence  by  reflection  upon  certain  peculiarities  in 
our  experience.  The  phenomena  of  experience  are  found  divid- 
ing into  two  groups  which  have  different  modes  of  behavior,  con- 
tents that  range  themselves  along  with  my  aches  and  pains 
as  dependent  on  my  body,  no  matter  in  what  part  of  space  I 
am,  getting  classed  together  as  the  self,  while  those  which  are 
given  in  permanent  space  relations,  or  which  change  their 
relations  in  accordance  with  uniform  laws  of  motion,  form 
another  group.  And  the  objects  in  this  last  group  not  only 
are  separate  from  other  psychical  facts  of  feeling,  but  as  a 
consequence  of  our  discovering  universal  laws  in  the  occur- 
rence of  phenomena,  they  are  shown  to  be  independent  even 
of  the  act  of  consciousness  that  makes  them  objects  of  per- 
^Ibid.,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  209  ff,  225,  334  ff. 


L.  T.  Hothouse  349 

ception.  For  since  a  fact  often  occurs  in  experience  without 
anyone  observing  at  the  time  the  prior  fact  which  a  conformity 
of  past  experience  has  shown  to  be  its  cause,  this  operates  as 
a  negative  instance  to  eUminate  the  character  of  "being  per- 
ceived" as  a  necessary  part  of  the  cause;  and  as  the  cause 
actually  has  produced  its  effect,  it  must  therefore  exist  un- 
perceived. 

It  is  to  be  added  further  that,  although  apprehension  is 
prior  to  the  thinking  process,  among  the  contents  of  immediate 
apprehension  are  to  be  found  not  only  sensational  qualities 
but  relations,  which  are,  therefore,  a  part  of  the  given,  and 
not,  as  the  Kantians  suppose,  a  contribution  by  the  "mind." 
Meanwhile  the  business  of  thought,  as  distinct  from  appre- 
hension, is  to  build  up  the  given  data  into  a  concrete  system, 
by  the  methods  of  analysis,  memory — which  is  an  awareness 
of  a  content  as  past,  as  apprehension  is  the  awareness 
of  content  as  present, — construction  into  wholes,  and  generali- 
zation. The  validity  of  such  a  system  is  tested  by  the  con- 
vergence of  many  judgments  each  adding  additional  weight 
to  the  rest,  the  corroboration  which  the  various  methods  lend 
to  one  another  constituting  also  the  rational  justification  of 
the  methods  themselves.  The  only  a  priori  elements  in  ex- 
perience are  thus  the  operations  of  the  mind  that  deal  with 
the  given.  These  functions  are  themselves  not  given,  since 
they  would  exist,  and  perform  their  work,  though  they  were 
never  explicitly  observed;  but  also  they  supply  no  content, 
which  last  comes  from  sense  apprehension  only. 

7.  In  his  earlier  book,  The  Theory  of  Knowledge,  Hobhouse 
inclines  to  an  empirical  caution  in  making  claims  about  the 
nature  of  the  real  system  to  which  thought  points.  Negatively, 
neither  the  mechanical  nor  the  teleological  category  can  be 
equal  to  it ;  probably  the  concept  of  an  organism  is  most  nearly 
adequate.  Meanwhile,  though  teleology  cannot  be  applied  to 
the  world  as  a  whole,  it  is  a  real  fact  in  the  world.  As  the  self, 
or  psycho-physical  whole, — the  intimate,  though  confessedly 


350       English  and  American  Philosophy 

mysterious,  union  of  consciousness  and  its  bodily  conditions, — 
develops  the  power  of  intelligent  prevision,  the  process  of  evo- 
lution comes  more  and  more  to  be  modified  by  its  action; 
though  the  natural  conditions  which  thus  prove  amenable  to 
intelligence  cannot  themselves  be  reduced  to  the  creation  of 
conscious  purpose.  It  is  here  apparently  that  Hobhouse's 
chief  interest  in  ultimate  questions  about  the  nature  of  reality 
is  located — in  the  desire  to  find  a  ground  for  that  confidence 
in  the  possibility  and  permanence  of  human  progress  which  is 
the  informing  spirit  of  Liberalism. 

In  a  later  volume.  Development  and  Purpose,  Hobhouse  goes 
further  in  a  speculative  attempt  to  show  our  right  to  extend 
to  the  universe  as  a  whole  that  conception  of  purposive  de- 
velopment, definable  as  a  process  moving  under  the  control 
of  the  idea  of  its  own  causal  tendency,  which  experience  re- 
veals to  us  as  the  reality  and  meaning  of  human  life.  In  the 
impulse  toward  organic  harmony  and  self-realization,  working 
under  the  limiting  conditions  of  the  body  on  which  the  mind's 
existence  depends,  and  gradually  subduing  these,  we  are  to  find 
a  clue  to  what  on  a  larger  scale  is  the  most  reasonable  interpre- 
tation of  the  cosmic  order  also.  This  harmony  does  not  by 
itself  explain  existence,  else  the  world  would  be  already  per- 
fect; reality  is  not  spiritual,  but  the  spiritual  is  an  aspect  of 
reality,  the  moving  force  of  ethical  development.  We  can  feel 
assured,  however,  that  what  exists  must  be  capable  of  being 
harmonized,  since  otherwise  we  should  be  threatening  the  va- 
lidity of  our  whole  understanding  of  experience,  which  we  can 
only  define,  in  a  way  to  give  us  rational  satisfaction,  in  terms 
of  development  along  definite  lines  of  tendency.  Reality,  then, 
at  any  given  time,  is  a  system  of  elements  conditioning,  and 
conditioned  by,  a  principle  of  organization  leading  up  to  an 
ultimate  harmony;  and  through  this  principle  everything  real 
is  thus  related  to  the  harmony,  in  spite  of  the  discord  which 
we  have  to  recognize  as  a  feature  of  reality  at  the  start.  In 
thus  reducing  Mind,  however,  which  alone  renders  development 


George  S  ant  ay  ana  351 

intelligible,  to  one  aspect  only  of  a  completer  whole,  in  which 
the  conditions  to  be  overcome  still  seem  to  our  thought  to  be 
external,  it  is  not  apparent  that,  save  in  intention,  Hobhouse 
has  really  succeeded  in  overcoming  a  troublesome  dualism, — 
a  dualism  which  is  not  to  be  avoided  by  calling  the  reality  one, 
or  even  by  calling  it  psycho-physical.  It  is  significant  that 
Hobhouse  is  compelled  to  admit  that  such  a  Mind  can  hardly 
be  similar  to  what  we  know  as  mind;  which  is  only  a  rounda- 
bout way  of  saying  that  the  conception  cannot  really  be  con- 
strued by  us. 

8.  Standing  apart  from  all  the  accredited  philosophical 
schools  of  the  day,  and  notable  also  as  one  of  the  almost  neg- 
ligible number  of  philosophical  writers  who  are  literary  artists 
as  well  as  thinkers,  is  the  representative  of  still  another  type 
of  naturalism, — a  naturalism  which,  as  in  the  case  of  George 
Meredith,  is  itself  explicitly  an  ideal  value,  rather  than  a  mere 
handmaid  to  science.  George  Santayana's  lack  of  influence  in 
proportion  to  the  weight  of  his  contribution  to  philosophical 
sanity  and  clarity,  perhaps  due  in  part  to  the  academic  dis- 
trust of  literary  gifts,  is  also  not  unconnected  with  a  tone  of 
condescension  which  he  is  apt  to  adopt  toward  competing 
views,  as  calling  rather  for  indulgence  than  for  serious  argu- 
ment. In  consequence  his  work  is  more  impressive  as  an 
imaginative  picture  of  a  certain  outlook  on  the  spiritual  life 
of  man,  than  for  its  explicit  dialectical  grounding.  The  lead- 
ing motive  is  suggested  by  the  title  of  his  chief  work.  The  Life 
of  Reason;  it  is  an  insistence  on  the  need  for  a  rationalization 
of  experience,  in  terms  solely  of  the  natural  life,  while  yet 
recognizing  the  central  place  in  life  of  value,  or  the  ideal.  This 
Life  of  Reason  takes  two  forms,  whose  logical  relation  is  on 
the  surface  not  entirely  evident.  For  purposes  of  explanation, 
Reason  can  be  satisfied  only  with  science  and  mechanism.  The 
source  of  all  that  happens  is,  unequivocally,  the  physical  world, 
of  which  the  bodily  organism  is  that  portion  which  consti- 
tutes "myself," — a  world  concerning  which  it  is  of  the  first 


352       English  and  American  Philosophy 

importance  to  recognize  that  it  is  neither  logical  nor  moral, 
but  just  a  brute  given  fact.  And  matter  is  the  only  causal 
agent;  consciousness  is  simply  a  natural  product  which  is  not 
a  cause,  but  a  report  of  what  is  going  on  in  the  organism,  the 
voice  of  the  body's  interests,  the  witness  and  reward  of  its 
operations. 

But  while  consciousness  thus  is  useless,  it  is  not  worthless; 
indeed,  it  is  the  only  seat  and  source  of  worth.  The  physical 
as  such  has  no  significance.  Merely  because  a  thing  happens 
to  exist  gives  it  no  claim  whatever  on  our  approval.  It  is  in 
the  recognition,  not  of  existence  or  causality,  but  of  preferable- 
ness,  of  the  satisfying  quality  of  such  ends  as  the  body  strives 
for  that  it  may  harmonize  and  fulfil  its  natural  needs,  that 
value  lies;  and  so  the  second  task  of  Reason  is  to  constitute 
that  ideal  realm  wherein  nature  takes  on  form  and  value  as 
viewed  from  the  vantage-ground  of  a  human  interest,  and  be- 
comes rational  in  proportion  as  the  life  of  impulse  is  brought 
into  a  harmonious  whole.  Reason,  then,  must  on  the  one 
hand  recognize  the  source  of  the  ideal  always  in  matter,  and  de- 
cline to  confuse  scientific  inquiry  into  causes  by  considerations 
of  end  or  meaning;  moral  interest  involves  special  preferences 
of  a  particular  organism,  by  which  it  is  chimerical  to  expect 
the  rest  of  the  world  to  be  determined.  And  yet  this  implies  on 
the  other  hand  that  values,  through  the  very  fact  that  they 
are  not  causes  in  the  natural  world,  have  their  own  intrinsic 
validity  as  essences  within  the  life  of  Reason  itself,  inex- 
pugnable so  long  as  we  are  consistent  in  refusing  to  materialize 
the  ideal,  and  bring  it  down  into  the  realm  of  existences  to 
play  a  part  among  other  things.  Such  a  materializing  of  the 
ideal  is  "superstition";  we  first  turn  the  facts  of  living  into  a 
myth  or  symbol, — as  we  have  a  right  to  do  if  it  enhances 
their  value,— but  then  go  on  to  substantialize  these  myths, 
and  forget  their  merely  poetic  function,  using  thus  our  false 
persuasion  of  the  invisible  presence  of  the  ideal  to  justify  and 
protract  its  absence.    Briefly,  then,  to  unite  a  trustworthy  con- 


George  S  ant  ay  ana  353 

ception  of  the  conditions  under  which  man  lives  with  an  ade- 
quate conception  of  his  interests,  to  adjust  all  demands  to  one 
ideal  and  adjust  that  ideal  to  its  natural  conditions, — this  is  to 
live  the  life  of  Reason. 

9.  The  method  which  Santayana  chooses  for  recommending 
his  philosophy,  as  has  been  said  before,  is  on  the  whole  more 
effective  in  bringing  home  its  aesthetic  appeal  than  in  straight- 
ening out  speculative  tangles.  There  is  very  slight  attempt  to 
prove — what  it  would  clearly  be  impossible  to  prove  in  any 
strict  sense — that  value  is  the  product  of  purely  mechanical 
and  unideal  processes,  that  consciousness  is  an  epiphenomenon 
without  practical  efficacy,  that  purpose  is  impossible  as  an  ob- 
jective category;  and  the  critical  objections  that  have  been 
many  times  brought  against  such  doctrines  are  given  scant 
consideration.  Nor  is  this  from  Santayana's  standpoint  an 
unreasonable  attitude;  if  reason  consists  in  a  perceived  harmony 
of  ideal  values,  we  might  expect  the  prestige  of  his  naturalism 
to  be  found  resting  less  upon  scientific  or  dialectic  argument 
than  on  its  own  inherent  reasonableness — on  the  satisfying 
emotional  or  aesthetic  appeal,  that  is,  which  it  makes  to  the 
contemplative  mind.  Even  practical  considerations  are  not 
relevant  here;  the  pragmatic  argument  that  only  by  looking 
for  effective  causality  in  the  mechanical  and  the  physical  are 
we  enabled  to  control  experience,  and  lead  the  natural  life 
successfully,  hardly  comes  in  question,  since  knowledge  be- 
longs to  that  life  of  ideal  essence  which  is  totally  ineffective, 
and  the  body  will  act  as  is  its  nature  to  act  in  any  case.  If 
we  are  to  understand  the  force  of  the  appeal  which  physical 
naturalism  makes,  we  must  look  for  it  where  all  value  lies — 
in  the  life  of  ideal  Reason  itself;  we  must  justify  the  scientific 
explanation  of  value  as  itself  a  value.  And  there  is  unquestion- 
ably an  emotional  appeal  just  in  the  sense  that  we  have  got 
down  to  the  bedrock  of  reality  denuded  of  all  subjective  and 
meretricious  charms,  that  our  mind  is  working  impersonally 
on  fact,  and  facing  without  flinching  whatever  existence  has 


354       English  and  American  Philosophy 

to  offer,  regardless  of  personal  or  even  human  demands.  And 
so  taken,  we  can  see  how  the  scientific  background  may  itself 
form  an  integral  part  of  the  ideal  life  of  which  it  is  supposed 
to  be  the  independent  and  unideal  basis,  and  so  can  bring 
together  after  a  fashion  the  two  forms  of  the  work  of  Reason. 

10.  One  point  however  continues  to  be  troublesome  when 
we  turn  to  the  ideal  itself.  The  conception  of  a  naturalistic 
ethics,  wherein  the  bodily  functions  are  transmuted  into  felt 
values  unspoiled  by  sentimentalism  or  by  superstition,  we  are 
apparently  not  to  understand  in  the  sense  in  which  to  most 
men  it  would  approve  itself.  In  strictness  it  would  seem  that 
the  good  can  hardly  after  all  consist  in  living  a  harmonious 
life  of  the  instmcts.  The  life  of  Reason  consists  not  in 
natural  living  in  its  own  right,  but  in  its  translation  into  terms 
of  ideal  and  rational  appreciation;  it  belongs  to  the  realm  of 
essence,  and  not  of  existence,  while  action  is  a  member  of  this 
latter  world.  For  our  ordinary  view  there  is  no  difficulty  here, 
because  the  ability  to  recognize  cognitively  the  nature  of 
natural  value  is  also  a  tool  for  getting  it  more  adequately  real- 
ized; reason  is  itself  an  aspect  of  satisfying  conduct.  But  if 
consciousness  has  absolutely  no  practical  efficacy,  but  is  only 
a  "sort  of  ritual  solemnizing  the  chief  episodes  in  the  body's 
fortunes,"  we  are  forced  to  reinterpret  our  natural  prejudice  in 
favor  of  conduct;  value  will  consist  not  in  living  the  harmonious 
life,  but  in  contemplating  and  understanding  its  ideal  harmony. 

And  this  seems  actually  to  be  the  outcome.  The  good  for 
Santayana  limits  itself  in  the  end  to  the  exercise  of  Reason 
on  its  ideal  material;  it  is  a  value  that  rests  on  "rational" 
activity  merely  with  its  twofold  satisfaction — the  satisfac- 
tion that  comes  from  the  unhampered  exercise  of  mind,  when 
to  this  is  added  the  aesthetic  charm  which  the  mind's  creations 
may  possess.  In  a  word,  the  one  true  value  lies  in  the  vision  of 
the  artist  clarified  by  reason,  and  working  on  the  stuff  of  life 
itself, — the  ideal  of  a  contemplative  participation  in  eternal 
truth  and  beauty.     Such  an  ideal  has  a  real  claim  to  rank 


George  Santayana  355 

among  human  goods.  And  it  is  by  reason  of  this  standpoint 
of  contemplation  rather  than  of  action, — ^where  varying  ideals 
are  apt  fatally  to  collide, — that  Santayana  is  able  to  offer  so 
wide  a  hospitality  to  individual  differences  of  ideal,  without 
apparently  feeling  the  need  to  subordinate  them  to  any  general 
standard  of  the  good.  But  just  on  this  account  it  may  be 
urged  that  he  has  forfeited  the  right  to  set  up  his  own  indi- 
vidual ideal  as  the  one  authoritative  form  of  good,  which  is 
what  he  really  does  when  he  ties  it  up  with  the  whole  intellec- 
tual understanding  of  the  universe  which  as  reasonable  beings 
we  are  bound  to  accept,  and  even,  one  may  suspect,  finds  in 
it  implicitly  at  least  his  major  premise. 

II.  One  further  aspect  of  the  situation  calls  for  some  at- 
tention on  the  part  of  metaphysics.  Perhaps  the  most  difficult 
point  in  Santayana's  system  is  the  status  to  be  assigned  to 
"essences."  An  essence,  on  the  simplest  interpretation,  repre- 
sents the  "nature"  of  things,  as  this  enters  into  consciousness 
to  constitute  knowledge;  it  is  the  stuff  out  of  which  the  life 
of  Reason  is  formed,  the  dialectical  setting  forth  of  whose 
eternal  relationships  constitutes  the  realm  of  logic.  But  whence 
comes  this  immensely  intricate  world  of  ideal  natures?  San- 
tayana's naturalism  would  prepare  us  to  suppose  that  its  source 
lies  in  the  physical  world  of  science;  and  this  in  so  far  is  an 
intelligible  claim,  though  open  to  the  difficulty,  traditionally 
attaching  to  all  materialisms,  that  many  characters  have  a  place 
in  the  ideal  life  of  which  physics  knows  absolutely  nothing. 
But  when  we  try  to  bring  the  more  explicit  philosophy  of 
nature  into  connection  with  the  doctrine  of  essence,  no  such 
simple  theory  will  satisfy  the  requirements. 

In  the  first  place,  when  we  consider  the  claim  that  science 
itself  is  a  form  of  the  life  of  Reason,  a  doubt  is  bound  to  sug- 
gest itself  whether  some  casuistic  reservation  is  not  present  in 
the  use  of  the  prestige  of  natural  science  to  support  the  sys- 
tem. In  point  of  fact,  while  the  outcome  appears  constantly 
to  presuppose  the  realistic  concept  of  a  law-abiding  physical 


356       English  and  American  Philosophy 

process  independent  of  human  experience,  and  capable  of  being 
definitely  and  precisely  characterized  in  scientific  terms,  San- 
tayana's  philosophical  interpretation  suggests  a  quite  different 
picture.  For  the  stuff  of  reality,  we  are  told,  is  just  the  flux 
of  sense  experience  itself,^  "nature"  being  aii  ideal  construct 
belonging  only  to  the  realm  of  essence;  science,  equally  with 
religion,  is  a  myth  or  symbol,  though  it  is  a  fruitful  symbol, 
in  that  we  are  enabled  by  it  to  predict  actual  occurrences  in 
the  universal  flux.  But  a  flux  of  sensations  means  a  very 
different  sort  of  world  from  the  realistic  world  which  science 
and  common  sense  take  for  granted;  it  is  not  at  all  clear  how 
the  one  has  any  community  with  the  other.  And  indeed 
Santayana^s  account  of  the  "objects"  which  a  realistic  view 
would  seem  to  imply,  as  a  local  conglomeration  of  several 
simultaneous  sensations  cut  out  from  the  flux  by  a  particular 
interest,  points  definitely  to  the  older  sensationalism,  rather 
than  to  realism. 2 

Meanwhile  another  element  of  uncertainty  enters  in,  when 
we  try  to  understand  the  relation  of  the  "essence"  to  this 
natural  world.  It  would  be  simplest  to  suppose  that  the  es- 
sence— its  qualitative  basis  that  is — is  actually  present  in  the 
flux,  and  that  the  mythical  character  of  "nature"  means  only 
that  our  human  constructs  are  a  selection  from  the  immensely 
more  complicated  structure  of  the  natural  world.  And  this  is 
indeed  what  the  preceding  account  of  "objects"  appears  to 
involve;  essences  are  described  as  ultimate  and  unexplainable 
characters  of  the  flux  of  experience  itself,  which  come  to  con- 
sciousness as  ideal  entities  through  the  revival  in  memory  of 
similar  sensations  temporally  distinct,  and  which  must  be  thus 
recognized  as  a  precondition  for  the  construction  of  objects. 
It  is  such  a  conception  that  explains  the  doctrine  of  the  in- 
effectiveness of  consciousness;  if  an  idea  is  simply  the  recog- 
nition of  a  character  common  to  different  portions  of  the 
stream  of  sensation,  it  can  of  course  have  no  causal  effect  upon 
^Reason  in  Common  Sense,  pp.  124  f.      *Ibid.,  Ch.  7. 


George  S  ant  ay  ana  357 

the  flow  of  this  stream.  But  now  along  with  this  there  is 
another,  and  a  seemingly  inconsistent  interpretation.  This  is 
the  conception  of  essences  as  inhabiting  an  ideal  realm  apart 
from  all  that  exists.  Nothing,  we  are  told,  can  ever  exist  in 
nature  or  for  consciousness  which  has  not  a  prior  and  inde- 
pendent locus  in  a  realm  of  essences.  The  foundation  of  being 
is  distinguishable  quality,  and  were  there  no  sets  of  differing 
characters,  one  or  more  of  which  an  existing  thing  might 
"appropriate,"  existence  would  be  altogether  impossible. 
There  is  an  infinite  storehouse  of  such  natures  on  which  we 
draw  to  clothe  the  universal  flux,  though  only  such  as  are 
suggested  by  matter  and  its  functions  can  really  enter  into 
experience  for  us.  The  superiority  of  the  "real  world" — the 
selection  of  essences  from  this  ideal  realm  which  it  has  been 
found  convenient  to  read  into  the  brute  facts  of  sense — over 
other  possible  worlds,  lies  only  in  the  greater  interest  it  pos- 
sesses for  a  being  himself  the  product  of  nature.^  In  the 
Life  of  Reason  these  latter  claims,  indeed,  it  would  appear  are 
only  intended  to  apply  to  the  dialectical  relations  that  hold 
between  empirical  characters;  ^  and  in  that  case  they  stand 
for  what  is  indeed  a  plausible  account  of  the  apparent  fact. 
But  if  essence  as  such  is  to  be  located  in  a  higher  and  inde- 
pendent realm,  we  are  dealing  with  a  much  more  ambitious 
and  speculative  contention,  which  opens  up  all  the  difficulties 
that  traditionally  attach  to  a  Platonic  realism. 

12.  One  further  essay  in  the  direction  of  realism,  though 
it  was  left  in  so  unfinished  a  form  that  it  is  impossible  to  say 
what  its  final  complexion  would  have  been,  is  that  of  Robert 
Adamson.  Adamson  made  his  reputation  originally  as  one  of 
the  most  distinguished  and  most  learned  of  the  idealistic  school ; 
toward  the  close  of  his  life,  however,  he  conceived  himself  to 
have  broken,  in  some  considerable  measure  at  least,  with  its 
accepted  tenets.    What  most  definitely  he  repudiates  is  the  de- 

^  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Vol.  VIII,  pp.  60  £f. 
*Cf.  Reason  in  Science,  pp.  146  f. 


3S8        English  and  American  Philosophy 

pendence  of  reality  upon  self-consciousness.  From  this  he 
turns  to  a  more  naturalistic  conception;  the  self  already  pre- 
supposes experience  as  objective,  in  that  the  object  cannot  be 
regarded  as  its  creation.  The  primitive  foundation  for  ob- 
jectivity lies  in  the  spatial  character  of  experience.  At  times 
this  seems  to  leave  self-consciousness  as  the  efflorescence  of  a 
physical  reality  which  exists  independent  of  awareness,  the 
character  of  inner  reference  which  constitutes  the  psychical 
being  the  quality  of  a  certain  configuration  that  emerges 
in  the  process  of  development.^  Other  passages  point  rather 
to  a  more  psychological  conception  of  experience  as  the  medium 
in  which  all  distinctions  whatsoever  arise,  self  and  not- 
self  developing  pari  passu.  At  least,  however,  it  would  appear 
that  for  Adamson  reality  is  a  real  process  or  growth,  not 
indeed  guided  by  a  conscious  end,  but  nevertheless  genuinely 
creative,  and  passing  into  new  forms;  it  is  inconsistent  therefore 
with  the  eternal  completeness  of  absolutism.  If  the  objective 
world  can  be  called  non-temporal,  it  is  only  in  the  sense  that, 
as  the  common  point  of  reference  for  the  experiences  of  a 
number  of  similar  percipient  subjects,  it  is  taken  as  logical 
content,  and  so  as  abstracted  from  existence.^ 

*  Development  of  Modern  Philosophy,  Vol.  I,  pp.  355  f . 
''Ibtd.y  Vol.  II,  pp.  27s,  305. 


CHAPTER  VII 
PRAGMATISM 

§  I.    C.  S.  Peirce.    Schiller 

I.  A  definition  of  pragmatism  is  hardly  attainable  that  will 
do  justice  to  all  the  various  motives  that  influence  its  adher- 
ents. The  most  unequivocal  and  universal  motive  is,  perhaps, 
the  negative  one  of  an  opposition  to  "intellectualism,"  with  its 
world  of  static  perfection  and  logical  completeness.  This  op- 
position is  of  course  not  limited  to  the  pragmatists ;  voluntarism, 
so-called,  has  been  seen  already  to  enter  largely  into  latter-day 
philosophy,  and  there  are  points  at  which  personal  idealism  and 
pragmatism  come  so  closely  together  that  it  is  not  an  easy  mat- 
ter to  distinguish  them.  But  while  both  make  use  of  the 
newer  psychology  with  its  teleological  background,  and  its 
acceptance  of  the  temporal  process,  they  use  it  in  the  service 
of  somewhat  different  interests.  The  concern  for  individuality 
and  selfhood  is,  at  least  in  the  more  thoroughgoing  forms  of 
pragmatism,  supplanted  almost  wholly  by  an  emphasis  on  the 
general  laws  and  conditions  of  progress,  in  which  the  person 
tends  to  be  a  vanishing  moment.  Accordingly  there  is  in  prag- 
matism a  much  closer  community  in  method  with  the  larger 
and  more  impersonal  scientific  movements  of  the  day;  indeed 
these  form  on  the  whole  its  most  important  intellectual  ante- 
cedent. Pragmatism  stands  for  the  importation  into  philosophy 
of  the  experimental  attitude  which  science  represents, — an  ex- 
perimentalism  with  a  strongly  positivistic  tone,  for  which  ideas 
are  fruitful  hypotheses  and  ways  of  getting  results,  rather 

359 


360       English  and  American  Philosophy 

than  attempts  at  describing  an  independently  real  worid. 
Especially  close  is  the  connection  with  Darwinism,  with  its  sub- 
stitution of  a  fluid  process  of  adjustment  and  readjustment  for 
the  fixed  boundary  lines  of  the  older  conceptions  of  nature.  It 
is  only  as  method,  however, — a  method  to  be  applied  primarily 
to  social  and  political  experience  rather  than  to  the  physical 
world, — that  science  particularly  interests  the  pragmatist;  and 
it  is  in  these  social  bearings  that  probably  his  most  distinctive 
motive  is  to  be  looked  for.  On  this  side,  pragmatism  is  an 
expression  of  the  more  radical  forms  of  the  modern  democratic 
temper,  with  its  distrust  of  political  institutions  established 
once  for  all,  and  not  subject  to  the  free  play  of  intelligence. 

2.  The  first  to  use  the  term  pragmatism  in  this  connection 
was  the  American  scientist  and  logician  Charles  S.  Peirce;  and 
Peirce  was  recognized  by  *James  at  least  as  one  of  the  original 
sources  of  his  own  pragmatic  doctrine.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
the  content  to  be  traced  back  to  this  particular  source  is  not 
very  substantial,  and  Peirce  himself  later  repudiated  the  glosses 
that  James  had  put  upon  it.  Peirce  is  explicit  in  denying  that 
thought  creates  its  object,  and  definitely  subscribes  to  the  belief 
in  a  reality  whose  characters  are  independent  of  what  anybody 
may  think  them  to  be.  The  function  of  the  will  in  matters  of 
belief  is  to  control  thought,  to  exercise  cautious  doubt,  to 
weigh  reasons;  and  this  is  the  exact  reverse  of  James'  "will 
to  believe,"  which  is  the  will  not  to  exercise  this  sceptical  will. 
So  Peirce  refuses  to  accept  the  appeal  to  "consequences,"  in 
its  more  obvious  personal  and  social  sense;  "I  must  confess," 
be  writes  for  example,  "that  I  belong  to  that  class  of  scala- 
wags who  prefer,  with  God's  help,  to  look  the  truth  in  the  face, 
whether  doing  so  be  conducive  to  the  interests  of  society  or 
not." 

Peirce's  own  pragmatism,  which  is  a  doctrine  of  the  "meaning 
of  ideas"  rather  than  of  "truth,"  is  not  itself  free  from 
obscurities,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  forms  the  burden  of  an 
article  on  How  to  Make  our  Ideas  Clear.    Its  original  statement 


C.  S.  Peirce  361 

is  as  follows:  "Consider  what  effects,  which  conceivably  might 
have  practical  bearings,  we  conceive  the  object  of  our  concep- 
tion to  have.  Then  our  conception  of  these  effects  is  the  whole 
of  our  conception  of  the  object."  From  the  context,  and  from 
at  least  some  of  the  illustrations  adduced,  one  would  suppose 
this  merely  intended  to  recommend  the  experimental  habit  of 
mind  characteristic  of  the  scientist  who  is  unwilling  to  take 
the  meaning  of  his  ideas  from  authority,  or  from  an  analysis 
of  their  conceptual  definition,  but  who  insists  upon  putting 
them  to  work  to  see  what  they  will  amount  to  in  perceptual 
terms,  and  what  further  perceptual  characteristics  they  will  de- 
velop. The  meaning  of  ideas  is  simply  what  they  come  to  in 
the  concrete;  "our  idea  of  anything  is  our  idea  of  its  sensible 
effects."  And  this  means  not  the  effect  in  some  particular  prac- 
tical situation,  but  in  all  discoverable  situations;  the  meaning 
of  a  proposition  is  "a  general  description  of  all  the  experimental 
phenomena  which  the  assertion  of  the  proposition  virtually  pre- 
dicts." Truth,  meanwhile,  carries  for  Peirce  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent sense.  Truth  is  the  mental  state  at  which  inquiry  aims, 
the  satisfied  feeling  that  ensues  as  we  pass  from  doubt  to  settled 
belief, — not  any  satisfaction  at  random,  but  the  satisfaction 
which  would  ultimately  be  found  if  the  inquiry  were  pushed 
far  enough,  and  whose  experimental  equivalent,  or  meaning,  is 
the  consensus  of  opinion  among  qualified  investigators.^  In  the 
outcome,  then,  the  meaning  of  life  would  seem  to  reduce  itself, 
for  Peirce,  to  habits  of  experimental  inquiry  that  aim  to  satisfy 
the  intellectual  demands  of  the  scientific  temper.  And  if  this 
is  the  case,  the  phrase  about  "practical  bearings"  on  which 
James  seized,  becomes  either  supererogatory,  or  actually  con- 
fusing; since  if  it  refers  to  the  action  involved  in  scientific 
"experiment"  it  is  already  sufficiently  covered,  while  any  ul- 
terior form  of  conduct  introduces  a  new  set  of  considerations 
with  which  the  rest  of  the  definition  has  no  obvious  point  of 
connection.  For  habits  of  action  are  expressly  regarded  as  hav- 
^  Popular  Science  Monthly,  Vol.  XII,  pp.  286  ff. 


362        English  and  American  Philosophy 

ing  their  source  in  beliefs  already  formed;  while  it  is  to  the 
process  of  forming  these  beliefs  that  the  rule  for  making  ideas 
clear  applies. 

Peirce  seems  also  to  have  influenced  James  on  the  meta- 
physical side  by  his  doctrine,  based  on  logical  rather  than  on 
ethical  grounds  however,  of  the  real  presence  of  chance  and 
indetermination  in  the  world,  and  by  a  radical  evolutionary 
interpretation  of  "law"  as  itself  evolved  from  an  original  chaos 
of  unpersonalized  feeling,  with  a  spontaneous  tendency  to 
growth  and  to  the  formation  of  habit.  Such  habits,  as  they  be- 
come inveterate,  are  what  we  know  as  physical  laws,  matter 
being  thus  definable  as  effete  mind,  mind  canalized  in  definite 
channels.  Apparently  this  is  a  fate  destined  to  overtake  all 
reality  in  the  remote  future. 

3.  As  an  explicit  philosophy,  pragmatism  has  developed 
along  three  main  lines,  more  or  less  independent  in  their  origin, 
and  by  no  means  identical  in  outcome.  In  England,  its  most 
prominent  exponent  is  F.  C.  S.  Schiller;  and  Schiller's  prag- 
matism is  on  the  whole  the  least  novel  of  the  three.  A  great 
part  of  what  he  has  to  say  in  detail  may  readily  be  interpreted 
without  making  it  necessary  to  assume  any  radically  new  phi- 
losophic standpoint;  it  is  the  continuation  of  a  tendency  that 
had  for  a  number  of  years  been  gathering  momentum, — a  ten- 
dency which  has  appeared  in  some  of  the  forms  of  idealism 
dealt  with  in  the  preceding  chapter,  and,  even  earlier,  in  New- 
man's Grammar  of  Assent.  This  affiliation  is  indicated  in 
Schiller's  choice  of  the  term  Humanism  as  a  badge  for  his  phi- 
losophy; and  it  explains  his  frequent  claim  that  pragmatism 
is  primarily  a  method  of  truth  only,  which  commits  one  to  no 
specific  metaphysical  conclusions.  Humanism  means  in  a 
general  way  the  grounding  of  knowledge  in  human  nature, 
rather  than  in  abstract  principles.  As  such,  it  involves  a  variety 
of  connected  claims: — that  thinking  is  a  mode  of  conduct,  an  ex- 
pression of  human  living,  and  so  to  be  understood  only  in  con- 
nection with  the  specific  situations  it  is  intended  to  meet;  that 


F.  C.  S.  Schiller  363 

psychology,  therefore,  and  not  logic  or  dialectic  solely,  is  essen- 
tial to  its  proper  understanding;  that  the  question  of  validity  is 
not  to  be  separated  from  that  of  genesis ;  that  the  service  which 
knowledge  performs  is  a  service  to  the  entire  man,  so  that  moral 
and  spiritual  interests  have  the  right  to  a  word  about  its  direc- 
tion, and  the  determination  of  its  success;  that  as  the  life  of 
man  is  practical  and  not  primarily  speculative,  the  foundations 
of  knowledge  rest  on  an  active  faith  instead  of  on  absolute  and 
self-evident  principles — are  postulates  rather  than  a  priori  axi- 
oms; and  that,  as  against  a  ready-made,  cut-and-dried,  unpro- 
gressive  knowledge,  whose  claim  to  our  respect  is  its  immo- 
bility and  dogmatic  certainty,  the  system  of  human  truth  is  a 
plastic,  growing  organism,  limited  by  no  static  facts  at  one 
end,  and  no  static  ideals  at  the  other,  and  interested  in  the 
problem  of  changing  the  world  and  bettering  man's  lot,  rather 
than  in  contemplating  an  eternal  perfection. 

There  is  nothing  so  far  that  might  not  conceivably  be  ac- 
cepted by  philosophers  of  a  fairly  wide  variety  of  types.  It  is 
when  we  turn  to  a  further  claim,  that  what  has  popularly  been 
attributed  to  pragmatism  as  its  distinctive  doctrine  appears. 
In  a  general  way,  this  may  be  put  in  the  form  of  a  contention 
that  truth,  or  knowledge,  is  a  creative  act,  to  which  reality 
itself  is  due.  It  is  usually  very  difficult  to  determine,  however, 
in  just  what  sense  such  a  claim  is  meant  to  be  taken.  If,  as  is 
possible,  we  could  be  supposed,  when  we  talk  about  truth,  to 
refer  to  no  more  than  the  growing  content  of  human  knowledge, 
most  of  the  paradoxes  of  the  pragmatist  would  turn  into  some- 
thing very  like  truisms.  Everybody  will  admit  that  our  actual 
knowledge  is  at  best  extremely  partial,  that  it  is  dependent  on 
practical  interests,  that  it  is  constantly  in  process  of  growth 
and  reconstruction.  We  may  even  say  that  reality  grows  with 
human  knowledge,  if  we  will  agree  to  mean  by  reality  only 
reality  for  us, — that  is,  the  content  in  terms  of  which  our  human 
knowledge  so  far  apprehends  the  real.  But  this  is  to  make 
truth  and  reality  no  more  than  alternative  expressions  for  one 


364       English  and  American  Philosophy 

and  the  same  thing;  whereas  reality  may  also,  and  commonly 
does,  stand  for  a  world  of  existences  on  which  it  is  natural  to 
say  that  our  human  thinking  itself  depends,  and  which  it  pre- 
supposes as  its  object. 

Now  we  ordinarily  find  it  hard  to  suppose  that  this  world 
changes  just  because  we  come  to  know  it, — that  the  universe 
with  its  milky  ways,  and  subterranean  fires,  and  its  long  evolu- 
tionary history,  waits  upon  the  appearance  of  human  science 
before  it  claims  the  right  to  exist.  There  are  various  subsidiary 
ways  indeed  in  which  knowing  changes  reality.  Every  fact  of 
knowing  is  an  alteration  in  ourselves;  it  may  lead  to  further 
changes  in  conduct,  and  thus  indirectly  modify  even  the  object 
that  it  knows;  and,  as  having  a  part  in  human  intercourse,  it 
perhaps  may  in  an  even  more  direct  way  influence  the  minds  of 
other  men.  And  all  this  is  pertinent  against  a  philosophy  which 
denies  the  reality  of  change  altogether,  or  the  effectiveness  of 
knowledge  in  bringing  change  about.  But  it  does  not  advance 
a  step  toward  refuting  the  common-sense  belief  that  a  world 
is  there  to  be  known  which  is  not  created  by  the  knowing  proc- 
ess; does  pragmatism  really  have  any  quarrel  with  this  claim  or 
not? 

4.  Schiller's  own  answer  is  wavering  and  evasive.  Regarded 
as  a  method  simply,  pragmatism  has  no  right  to  raise  the  ques- 
tion even,  for  the  suggestion  that  reality  has  no  further 
content  than  that  of  growing  knowledge  is  plainly  trespassing 
already  on  metaphysics.  Nevertheless  Schiller  seems  to  be 
always  on  the  point  of  saying,  or  of  wanting  to  say,  that  knowl- 
edge creates  reality  in  every  sense.  So,  for  example,  he  denies 
our  right  to  urge  against  the  pragmatist  that  mere  knowing  does 
not  seem  capable  of  altering  reality,  on  the  ground  that  "mere" 
knowing  is  an  intellectualist  abstraction,  cognition  being  in- 
complete until  it  is  discharged  in  action;  ^  apart  from  a  desire 
to  refuse  to  knowledge  any  function  whatever  that  stops  short 
of  altering  the  object,  the  resort  to  such  an  equivocation  seems 
^Stiidies  in  Humanism,  p.  440. 


F,  C.  S,  Schiller  365 

unnecessary  and  hardly  comprehensible.  And  there  is  one 
prominent  feature  in  particular  in  his  theory  of  knowledge 
which  suggests  strongly  such  an  animus. 

This  is  the  denial,  many  times  repeated,  that  knowledge 
involves  in  any  sense  a  "dualism,"  or  the  reference  to  an  inde- 
pendent real.  If  knowledge  literally  brings  into  existence  the 
ultimately  real  world,  then  the  ground  for  this  denial  is  ap- 
parent; but  also  it  runs  the  risk  of  vindicating  the  creative 
function  of  knowledge  at  the  expense  of  falling  into  solipsism. 
When  pragmatism  becomes  logically  most  self-conscious,  as 
in  John  Dewey,  it  is  scrupulous  not  to  allow  for  a  moment  the 
suggestion  that  a  problem  may  exist  about  the  connection  of 
experience  with  reality  beyond;  the  whole  possibility  is  rigidly 
excluded  from  the  mind,  thereby  at  one  blow  ruling  out  a 
dualistic  theory  of  knowledge,  and — since  the  subjective, 
equally  with  the  objective,  is  an  aspect  arising  within  experi- 
ence— evading  the  charge  of  subjectivity  and  solipsism.  But 
Schiller  is  less  wary  in  his  tactics;  and  he  does  not  hesitate  to 
describe  knowledge  in  a  way  that  identifies  it  with  distinctively 
human,  and  even  individual  experience,  and  that  renders  solip- 
sism confessedly  a  possible  interpretation.  The  consequence 
is  that  while  in  words  he  more  than  once  allows  the  intelligi- 
bility, and  even  the  pragmatic  value,  of  a  belief  in  reality  which 
our  knowledge,  at  any  rate,  finds  and  does  not  create,^  he  con- 
tinues to  define  knowledge  itself  in  a  way  that  makes  the  pos- 
sibility of  this  logically  very  doubtful;  and  the  result  is  an 
almost  insurmountable  difficulty  in  finding  for  his  utterances  a 
single  consistent  interpretation. 

That  other  selves,  at  least,  exist  which  are  not  created  when 
we  come  to  know  them,  Schiller  seems  to  leave  us  in  no  doubt; 
though  to  say  that  a  pragmatic  reason  can  be  given  for  this 
belief,  and  that  other  selves  are  postulates  necessary  to  our 
social  needs,  does  not  tell  us  how,  after  pragmatically  affirming 
such  existences,  we  can  still  continue  to  maintain  that  knowl- 
^Ibid.,  pp.  201-2. 


366       English  and  American  Philosophy 

edge  creates  the  real  world  as  it  goes  along,  and  carries  no  dualis- 
tic  reference  to  independent  being.  About  the  world  of  nature,  it 
is  less  easy  to  be  sure  of  Schiller's  attitude.  Here  also  there  is 
reason  to  suppose  him  ready  at  times  to  subscribe  to  the  belief 
in  a  world  evolving  independently  of  human  knowledge;  but  he 
persistently  manages  to  keep  this  admission  from  coming  face 
to  face  with  the  possibility,  seemingly  involved  in  it,  that  the 
immediate  business  of  knowledge  may  be  after  all  to  describe 
reality  faithfully,  rather  than  to  create  it.  Thus  his  doctrine  of 
an  original  indeterminate  vIt]  as  the  stuff  of  reality,  vacillates 
between  psychology  and  metaphysics  in  a  most  elusive  man- 
ner. As  an  account  of  the  psychological  growth  of  human  life, 
it  is  intelligible  to  hold  that  we  start  with  relatively  unde- 
termined matter  of  experience,  the  raw  material  of  a  cosmos, 
and  gradually  mold  this,  under  the  lead  of  practical  demands, 
into  a  more  and  more  articulate,  but,  for  us,  always  unfinished 
and  growing  world,  the  tools  that  make  the  organization  pos- 
sible being  themselves  forged  in  the  process.  But  what  also 
we  should  like  to  know  is,  whether  this  process  is  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  real  world  itself,  or  whether  it  is  the  evolution  of 
our  acqtmintance  with  a  world  which  has  its  own  independent 
character;  and  if  the  last,  then  what  alternative  there  is  to 
the  supposition  that  this  character  of  things  is  reproduced  for 
us,  and  not  created,  in  true  knowledge.  Somehow  this  issue 
seems  to  slip  from  between  our  fingers,  and  we  find  ourselves 
engaged  with  a  quite  different  question — whether  the  outer 
world  may  not  itself  have  grown  up  through  a  process  similar 
to  our  knowing  process.^  This  too  is  a  legitimate  metaphysical 
speculation;  though  in  carrying  us  back  to  a  limit  of  formless 
matter  as  the  sufficient  basis  of  the  developing  universe,  it  has 
a  strong  initial  incredulity  to  overcome.  But  it  is  not  the  par- 
ticular question  that  needs  answering.  If  by  other  beings  a  de- 
terminate structure  of  reality  has  already  been  brought  about, 
which  I  have  now  to  accept  as  limiting  my  possibilities  of  true 
^Ihid.,  p.  446. 


F.  C.  S,  Schiller  367 

belief,  then  the  relation  of  my  knowledge  to  this  reality  will  in- 
volve more  than  Schiller's  customary  formula  can  include,  and 
will  negative  the  claims  of  knowledge  to  creative  power  in 
this  particular  respect. 

5.  Meanwhile  it  is  only  fair  to  add  that,  while  it  does  not 
help  to  clear  up  the  metaphysical  issue  involved,  Schiller's  more 
paradoxical  claims  can  be  discounted  in  a  measure  by  remem- 
bering his  main  polemical  interests.  For  it  is  constantly  appear- 
ing that  when  he  argues  against  a  reality  that  is  independent, 
that  undergoes  no  change  when  we  come  to  know  it,  and  that 
coerces  true  belief,  he  is  really  thinking  only  of  one  particular 
conception  of  reality.  He  is  protesting  first  of  all,  that  is, 
against  the  notion  that  reality  as  a  whole  is  static,  and  our 
knowledge  a  useless  addition  to  a  world  already  perfect.  Just  as 
the  English  Hegelian  instinctively  translates  all  objections  to 
his  philosophy  into  terms  of  Humian  sensationalism,  so  the 
pragmatist  in  turn  is  obsessed  by  Hegelian  absolutism,  and 
keeps  swinging  back  to  it  as  if  it  were  the  only  rival  in  the 
field.  The  typical  pragmatist  is  given  to  imputing  "intellec- 
tualism"  to  his  opponent  as  the  theologian  imputes  vice;  and 
thereby  no  doubt  he  makes  his  polemical  task  much  easier. 
But  between  absolutism  and  an  empirical  dualism  there  is  ab- 
solutely no  necessary  connection.  How,  we  are  asked,  can 
knowledge  on  the  one  hand  adjust  itself  to  human  demands  and 
interests,  and  yet  on  the  other  slavishly  copy  and  respectfully 
reproduce  a  congenitally  outer  and  already  preceding  fact? 
The  answer,  when  we  do  not  insist  on  setting  reality  as  a  whole 
over  against  knowledge  as  a  whole,  appears  simple  enough. 
The  reality  which  we  profess  to  know  is  not  the  universe  at 
large,  but  a  particular  piece  of  reality.  And  the  claim  that  to 
know  this  truly  one  must  think  its  actual  features,  and  is  frus- 
trated in  this  task  if  the  knowing  process  alters  it,  is  to  leave 
the  rest  of  the  universe  open  to  all  the  change  you  please,  and 
even  the  particular  object  open  to  such  future  alteration  as  the 
truth  we  find  out  about  it  may  enable  us  to  effect.   How  indeed 


368        English  and  American  Philosophy 

should  we  set  about  actually  altering  the  world  in  practice,  if 
knowledge  could  not  put  us  in  touch  with  the  real  facts  of  the 
situation  we  want  to  change? 

6.  The  uncertainties  attaching  to  Schiller's  doctrine  do  not 
on  the  whole  seriously  affect  the  force  of  his  larger  humanistic 
contentions.  But  one  logical  aspect  of  the  matter  ought  not  to 
be  passed  over,  which  does  cast  some  doubt  upon  his  use  of 
pragmatism  even  as  a  method,  in  that  it  seems  to  minimize  to  an 
extent  the  necessity  for  a  scrupulous  logical  conscience.  The 
point  has  to  do  with  a  disposition  to  use  the  value  of  knowledge 
for  forward-looking  conduct  to  absolve  us  from  the  need  of 
finding  an  answer  to  speculative  perplexities.  More  especially 
do  we  find  this  attitude  intruding  in  the  metaphysical  inter- 
pretation of  the  ultimate  end  of  life,  and  so  of  reality,  as  a  state 
of  harmonious  equipoise,  in  which  activity  has  transcended  time 
and  change.  That  time  and  evolution  present  unsolved 
difficulties  is  not  denied.  But  time  is  moving  toward  a  future 
where  it  will  pass  into  eternity.  And  when  this  consummation 
is  effected,  we  shall  no  longer  have  any  occasion  to  puzzle 
ourselves  over  problems  that  are  now  forever  in  the  past;  we 
shall  have  answered  questions  by  having  grown  so  well  content 
as  not  to  ask  them.^  It  would  seem  a  logically  more  reputable 
plan  to  refuse,  with  other  pragmatists,  to  recognize  that  specu- 
lative problems  have  even  now  a  standing,  than,  once  having 
granted  their  compulsion,  to  recommend  that  an  answer  be 
found  through  forgetting  that  they  ever  have  been  asked. 

§  2.    William  James 

I.  The  philosophical  significance  of  William  James,  the 
second,  and  in  the  eyes  of  the  general  public  the  most  eminent 
of  the  pragmatists,  is  unusually  difficult  to  appraise  with  con- 
fidence.   Notwithstanding  the  fertility  with  which  in  his  later 

^Ihid.,  pp.  198,  436. 


William  James  369 

years  he  threw  out  one  brilliant  suggestion  after  another,  these 
are  seldom  of  a  sort  to  be  pinned  down  readily  to  a  single  un- 
ambiguous meaning;  while  to  combine  them  into  a  systematic 
whole  of  doctrine  is  an  almost  hopeless  task.  On  the  whole,  it 
is  not  unlikely  that  the  contribution  on  which  his  fame  will 
ultimately  rest  may  turn  out  to  be  the  earlier  Psychology;  and 
in  any  case  it  is  on  flashes  of  psychological  insight  into  the 
concrete  workings  of  the  human  mind,  rather  than  on  logically 
reasoned  solutions  of  historic  problems,  that  the  value  of  his 
more  ambitious  speculative  efforts  depends.  Keenly  aware  of 
his  own  temperamental  demands  upon  the  universe,  *James  set 
himself  in  particular  to  defend  the  rights  of  temperament, 
against  the  common  profession  on  the  part  of  the  philosopher 
to  be  an  impersonally  accurate  logical  machine.  This  attitude 
was  itself,  he  saw,  one  particular  temperament  among  others — 
a  temperament  in  which  he  did  not  himself  find  a  great  deal 
to  admire.  And  by  laying  bare  the  meagreness  of  ordinary 
philosophical  interests,  and  calling  attention  to  new  motives 
that  conceivably  have  a  right  to  satisfaction,  James  is  able 
very  frequently  to  approach  traditional  problems  from  a  stand- 
point that  is  both  novel  and  stimulating,  even  when  his  doctrinal 
outcome  fails  to  produce  conviction. 

2.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  dwell  upon  James'  contributions 
to  psychology;  the  most  important  of  them  have  entered  into 
current  thought,  on  its  popular  as  well  as  on  its  more  profes- 
sional side.  Most  pertinent  to  the  general  problems  of  phi- 
losophy is  the  voluntaristic  emphasis — the  insistence,  that  is, 
upon  the  active  side  of  conscious  process  in  opposition  to  the 
older  disposition  to  resort  to  a  mechanical  association  of  pas- 
sively received  impressions;  and  on  the  central  significance, 
therefore,  of  the  biological  organism  with  its  equipment  of 
specific  instincts,  and  its  relation  to  the  larger  evolutionary 
process.  What  is  essentially  the  same  thing  gets  expression 
on  the  inner  side  in  the  conception  of  a  "stream  of  conscious- 
ness"— a  continuum  out  of  which  elements  are  selected  by 


370       English  and  American  Philosophy 

their  relevancy  to  the  needs  of  life,  instead  of  being  given  in 
their  isolation  at  the  start.  One  particularly  significant  aspect 
of  this  stream  James  brought  to  general  notice  in  his  doctrine 
of  the  "fringe" — a  conception  which  has  done  service  in  calling 
attention  not  only  to  the  subtler  facts  of  "meaning,"  of  feelings 
of  tendency  and  direction,  which  James  later  utilizes  in  his 
epistemology,  but,  less  directly,  to  the  mysterious  regions  of 
the  sub-conscious,  on  which  he  likewise  draws  for  his  inter- 
pretation of  religion. 

3.  In  turning  from  psychology  to  the  philosophical  interests 
which  occupied  James'  later  life,  and  to  which  Pragmatism  sup- 
plies a  general  title,  one  has  to  contend  with  the  same  elusive- 
ness  in  the  meaning  of  the  term  as  in  the  case  of  Schiller.  Prag- 
matism is  identified  in  the  first  place  with  Peirce's  principle, 
as  James  interprets  it  at  any  rate,  that  there  is  no  difference 
which  does  not  make  a  difference,  and  that  two  statements 
really  amount  to  the  same  thing  unless  they  lead  to  significant 
consequences  that  can  be  distinguished.  So  far,  this  is  little 
more  than  a  protest  against  imintelligent  hair-splitting,  and 
purely  verbal  subtleties  that  do  not  essentially  further  conduct ; 
it  gives  a  method  for  determining  what  intellectual  inquiries  are 
practically  worth  pursuing,  and  so  for  weeding  out  useless  con- 
troversy, rather  than  a  definition  of  what  truth  consists  in. 
It  is  not  an  infallible  method  by  any  means.  For  almost  any 
logical  distinction  it  may  be  possible  to  find  some  consequence 
that  for  some  mind  may  assume  a  practical  value;  and  between 
values  it  supplies  no  way  of  choice.  If  however  it  is  held  mod- 
estly, it  does  point  a  useful  moral  against  the  preoccupation 
with  trivial  matters  of  logic  out  of  relation  to  vital  human  in- 
terests, and  inculcate  a  practical  sense  of  proportion  which  is 
one  ingredient  in  the  pragmatic  temper  of  mind.  The  warning 
becomes  shortsighted  if  it  tries  to  frighten  men  off  from  sub- 
jects and  problems  that  interest  them,  but  do  not  happen  to 
interest  the  critic;  or  from  problems  whose  relevancy  to  human 
affairs  does  not  at  once  strike  the  eye,  but  has  partly  to  be 


William  James  371 

taken  on  faith  from  their  capacity  to  arouse  this  interest. 
Thus  James'  own  preference  for  thick  over  thin  philosophies 
is  apt  to  mislead  him  into  minimizing  what  is  after  all  the  use- 
ful habit  of  exact  logical  analysis,  thereby  affecting  apprecia- 
bly the  value  of  his  efforts  at  philosophic  construction.  Never- 
theless in  the  large  the  pragmatic  emphasis  on  the  need  of  re- 
ferring all  intellectual  adventures  to  a  connection  with  human 
life  if  they  are  to  retain  their  zest  and  their  significance,  seems 
deserving  of  approval. 

4.  Closely  tied  up  with  this  is  a  second  point — the  vindica- 
tion of  the  right  to  extend  belief  beyond  definite  evidence, 
where  important  issues  of  life  are  at  stake.  James'  essay  on 
the  Will  to  Believe  has  become  a  classical  document  for  this 
tendency  in  modem  thought.  The  title  may  however  help  con- 
vey a  wrong  impression  of  the  degree  of  James'  own  heterodoxy. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  the  doctrine  is  carefully  qualified,  and 
stands  not  in  the  least  for  a  right  to  believe  whatever  our  whim 
suggests.  It  applies  only  to  convictions  that  deal  with  momen- 
tous issues,  where  intellectual  reasons  are  insufficient  to  settle 
the  matter  either  way,  and  where,  again,  the  issue  is  "forced," 
so  that  to  withhold  decision  is  equally  to  lose  the  advantages 
that  would  follow,  if  the  belief  were  a  true  one,  from  accepting 
it.  It  is  better,  that  is,  to  risk  being  mistaken,  than  to  give 
up  the  chance  of  truth  through  an  exaggerated  notion  of  the 
wickedness  of  error;  in  knowledge,  as  elsewhere,  courage  and 
the  readiness  to  take  a  sporting  chance  are  conditions  of  at- 
taining the  good.  Meanwhile  there  is  nothing  in  this  to  make 
it  necessary  to  suppose  that  judgments  are  constituted  true  by 
their  satisfaction  of  desire;  indeed,  the  insistence  that  we  gain 
the  right  to  believe  under  the  lead  of  desire  only  as  we  are 
ready  to  assume  a  personal  risk,  would  have  no  meaning  were 
not  the  facts  what  they  are  independent  of  the  belief.  There 
are  cases,  indeed,  where  the  very  acceptance  of  a  belief  may 
itself  make  the  belief  come  true;  but  these  are  quite  simple 
and  commonplace.    As  a  belief  that  something  is  going  to  hap- 


372        English  and  American  Philosophy 

pen  is  literally  made  true  when  the  expectation  is  fulfilled,  so 
a  faith  in  the  possibility  of  such  a  future  fact  may  help  to 
bring  the  fact  about.  But  it  is  only  to  the  belief  in  a  futtire 
event,  to  what  I  can  do  or  effect,  that  this  applies  in  any 
case;  and  meanwhile  the  act  always  has  determining  conditions 
which  stand  on  a  wholly  different  footing.  If  I  judge  a  chasm 
to  be  five  feet  wide  when  in  reality  it  is  ten,  this  belief  does 
not  make  itself  come  true,  nor  does  it  increase  my  chance  of 
getting  across  safely;  and  even  the  self-confident  estimate  of 
my  powers  works  only  within  narrow  limits,  and  may  lead  to 
rash  enterprises  and  to  consequent  calamity. 

5.  A  third  significant  motive,  which  also  is  involved  in 
James'  treatment  of  the  knowledge  problem,  gets  expression  in 
the  insistent  demand  for  a  world  which  leaves  room  for  effort 
and  experiment,  for  real  adventure,  and  real  danger,  and  real 
possibility  of  choice, — a  world  which  does  not  weigh  upon  our 
spirits  as  an  enveloping  and  stifling  fate,  but  which  is  loosely 
articulated,  and  responsive  to  our  endeavor  to  alter  it.  This 
antipathy  to  the  block  universe  of  monism  and  determinism 
is  what  lends  to  James'  pages  much  of  their  freshness  and  their 
stimulating  character,  as  the  antithesis  of  that  reverence  for 
established  values  of  which  English  Hegelianism  is  the  mouth- 
piece; its  interest  in  the  specific  and  irreducible  qualities  of 
things,  its  conviction  that  evils  are  really  evil  and  not  to  be 
treated  gently  because  they  are  entrenched  in  reality  or  the 
Absolute,  its  respect  for  the  individual  man  and  his  personal 
efforts,  for  experimentalism,  and  the  right  to  override  the  im- 
pressiveness  of  institutions  and  traditions — all  this  represents 
what  may  fairly  be  called  the  distinctively  American  note  in 
his  philosophy.  While,  however,  this  suggests  metaphysical 
novelties  in  plenty,  in  that  it  takes  seriously  time  and  flow,  real 
change,  real  novelty,  real  chance  within  the  limits  of  choices 
that  concretely  touch  the  will,  it  implies  again  no  single  un- 
ambiguous theory  of  truth.  All  that  it  calls  for  is  a  sort  of  uni- 
verse in  which  evils  may  be  got  rid  of,  and  growing  ideals  may 


William  James  373 

stand  a  chance  of  being  realized;  and  for  this  a  different  ac- 
count of  knowledge  might  equally  provide. 

6.  The  prestige  that  comes  from  whatever  truth  may  lie 
in  the  preceding  considerations  must  then  be  dispensed  with 
before  we  can  estimate  the  claim  of  pragmatism  to  be  regarded 
as  a  distinctive  new  philosophy;  and  it  remains  to  ask  more  pre- 
cisely what  such  a  claim  amounts  to.  There  are  at  least  three 
possibilities  that  can  be  dealt  with  more  or  less  in  separation, 
though  in  James'  own  treatment  they  are  constantly  mingled. 
One  fairly  intelligible  meaning,  to  begin  with,  grows  out  of 
the  suggestions  of  scientific  method.  A  scientific  theory  may 
be  regarded  as  a  methodological  device  for  handling  more 
compendiously  the  data  of  experience;  and  so  regarded,  many 
of  James'  contentions  will  apply  to  it  in  a  quite  literal  sense. 
A  theory  is  indeed  true  only  as  it  works,  since  its  whole  claim 
rests  upon  its  capacity  for  working;  it  is  shown  to  be  valid 
not  by  its  success  in  copying  an  independent  reality,  but  by 
leading  us  to  expect  consequences  that  actually  arrive,  or,  at 
the  least,  by  bringing  the  facts  already  known  into  intelligible 
relations.  We  have  no  particular  reason  to  imagine  that  there 
exists  in  nature  the  peculiar  concatenation  of  abstract  char- 
acters which  our  hypotheses  represent;  relationships  sup- 
posedly are  really  there  to  be  discovered,  but  they  are  hardly 
there  in  the  form  of  conceptual  shorthand.  Scientific 
hypotheses  are  of  human  creation,  the  accumulation  of  man's 
intellectual  inventions;  and  they  are  never  final  in  the  sense 
that  their  formulas  are  open  to  no  further  change. 

But  now  a  theory  about  theories  ought  not  to  be  allowed  to 
usurp  the  sole  title  to  the  name  of  truth  without  remonstrance. 
To  know  reality  does  not  mean  exclusively  that  we  are  engaged 
in  constructing  hypotheses  to  account  for  reality.  Strictly  it 
is  the  term  validity  that  ought  to  be  applied  to  the  effectiveness 
of  a  hypothetical  method  of  reaching  some  result,  intellectual 
or  practical,  in  which  we  take  an  interest.  But  validity  itself 
presupposes  a  different  sense  in  which  we  can  be  said  to  know. 


374       English  and  American  Philosophy 

It  presupposes  an  existing  situation  in  which  there  are  agents, 
needs  to  be  satisfied,  conditions  that  render  the  satisfaction 
attainable,  intellectual  constructs  intended  to  serve  as  instru- 
ments; and  unless  this  is  conceived  realistically,  and  not  itself 
pragmatically,  the  whole  outlook  becomes  a  shifting  mirage, 
needs  of  conduct  blend  with  the  needs  of  philosophic  inter- 
pretation, and  language  utterly  refuses  to  stand  for  anything 
permanent  enough  to  last  even  to  the  end  of  our  discourse. 
The  thinking  process  through  which  hypotheses  are  formed 
needs  from  start  to  finish  to  draw  upon  a  concrete  imaginative 
realization  of  things  and  events  in  their  own  nature;  ideas  as 
symbols  or  plans  of  action  are  helpless  apart  from  ideas  as 
the  essences  of  real  objects.  If  this  imaginative  commerce  with 
things  absent  is  not  to  be  called  knowledge,  by  what  title  ought 
it  to  go?  In  spite  of  all  James  can  adduce  to  render  plausible 
the  claim  that  thought  adds  to  reality  instead  of  reproducing  it, 
in  the  end  he  always  comes  up  against  facts  that  are  recalci- 
trant. My  thought  adds  to  a  starry  constellation  a  name  which 
was  not  there  previously — this  is  true,  but  trivial.  I  mark  out 
this  group  artificially  from  the  rest  of  the  firmament,  and  num- 
ber the  stars  by  counting  them;  and  perhaps  neither  God  nor 
man  had  ever  made  the  selection  or  the  count  before.  But  the 
stars  are  there  to  be  counted,  as  James  has  to  confess,  and  the 
number  is  there  to  be  discovered;  and  to  say  that  our  knowl- 
edge agrees  with  what  ailready  preexisted,  but  does  not  copy  it, 
is  to  make  a  distinction  without  any  real  difference.^ 

7.  Meanwhile  the  conception  of  knowledge  as  hypothetical 
shorthand  is  used  by  James  interchangeably  with  a  somewhat 
different  notion,  which  comes  much  closer  to  the  popular  un- 
derstanding of  pragmatism  as  the  identification  of  truth  with 
satisfying  consequences.  This  is  the  notion  of  a  "plan  of  ac- 
tion." An  explanatory  hypothesis  may  perhaps  be  called  a  plan 
of  action  in  a  loose  and  general  way;  but  it  is  not  what  the 
phrase  would  of  itself  suggest  to  most  readers.  A  purpose  is 
^Pragmatism,  pp.  2.«;2  ff.;  Meaning  of  Truth,  pp.  92  ff. 


William  James  375 

indeed  involved  in  scientific  explanation — a  purpose  satisfied 
by  the  intellectual  consequence  of  finding  your  data  intelligibly 
accounted  for  in  your  formula;  and  if  the  doctrine  of  "conse- 
quences" is  sufficiently  covered  by  a  definition  of  truth  as  that 
answer  to  a  specific  problem  which  the  "total  drift  of  thinking 
tends  to  confirm,"  few  philosophers  probably  would  take  ex- 
ception to  it.  But  this  falls  a  good  deal  short  of  what  James 
elsewhere  leads  us  to  expect.  Indeed  if  he  allows  that  the 
satisfaction  of  understanding  rightly  is  enough  to  make  knowl- 
edge pragmatic,  no  pratical  difference  of  any  importance  would 
seem  to  remain  between  pragmatism  and  intellectualism,  since 
the  intellectualist  on  his  part  has  seldom  had  any  objection  to 
admitting  that  knowledge  has  also  practical  uses,  so  long  as 
he  is  allowed  to  make  knowing  itself  a  distinctive  aim;  and  ac- 
cordingly on  pragmatic  principles  the  two  philosophies  would 
be  shown  to  be  identical.  What  James  has  seemed  often  to  be 
saying  is,  that  thought  is  for  the  sake  of  action  ulterior  to 
itself,  and  so  that  it  is  these  further  consequences  that  really 
count.  Of  course  it  may  be  said  that  pure  science,  as  experi- 
mental, itself  passes  into  action,  in  that  it  is  constantly  apply- 
ing its  theories  to  new  cases.  But  nevertheless  its  interest  in 
these  is  not  as  a  means  of  satisfying  more  ultimate  human  pur- 
poses; it  is  in  their  power  to  verify  the  formula.  The  new  fact 
is  not  the  end  at  which  thought  aims,  but  only  one  more  datum, 
having  a  peculiar  strategic  value,  to  be  fitted  into  the  hy- 
pothesis; and  the  distinctive  satisfaction  still  remains  the  in- 
tellectual one  of  marrying  previously  known  facts  with  further 
facts.  It  is  possible  that  pragmatism  might  be  interpreted  to 
mean  no  more  than  this,  and  that  when  we  say  that  truth  con- 
sists in  consequences,  we  are  merely  intending  to  maintain  that 
an  hypothesis  is  not  justified  in  stopping  with  its  own  first  for- 
mulation, however  well  this  may  seem  to  explain  the  data  so 
far  known,  but  should  be  applied  in  a  way  to  show  that  it 
is  capable  of  covering  as  many  new  facts  as  we  are  able  by 
active  experiment  to  uncover.    But  here  there  is  no  distinctive 


376       English  and  American  Philosophy 

theory  of  knowledge  involved,  since  everyone  worth  con- 
vincing is  already  convinced  in  the  abstract  that  no  hypothesis 
can  be  accepted  as  true  unless  it  can  hold  out  against  any 
further  facts  that  later  on  turn  up. 

It  seems  difficult  not  to  suppose,  then,  that  there  is  one  strain 
in  James'  account  of  truth  which  tends  to  identify  it  with  prac- 
tical as  distinct  from  speculative  satisfaction;  a  thing  is  true 
so  long  as  it  is  profitable  to  us,  or  affords  us  emotional  gratifica- 
tion. Of  course  James  cannot  be  supposed  to  have  any  real 
notion  of  maintaining  that  we  are  to  believe  anything  we  choose 
to  believe  because  it  would  be  pleasant  to  do  so.  For  the 
most  part  it  is  not  the  good  of  believing,  but  the  good  of 
acting  on  belief,  to  which  his  theory  points  us;  and  if  we  were 
to  insist  that  all  beliefs  be  acted  on  fully  and  consistently, 
and  that  all  the  consequences  be  taken  into  account,  the  prac- 
tical danger  from  rash  belief  would  be  negligible.  Only  such 
beliefs  as  cannot  be  tested  directly  by  consequences  in  the 
natural  world  would  be  left  to  the  test  merely  of  emotional 
satisfaction;  and  the  right  to  extend  belief  here  James  has 
already  and  less  paradoxically  defended.  Nevertheless  his 
words  do  sometimes  seem  to  say  that  any  degree  of  satis- 
factoriness  aimed  at  and  secured  constitutes  a  belief  true. 
Thus  in  a  well-known  passage  where  he  concedes  even  to  the 
Absolute  a  certain  significance,  as  furnishing  the  occasion  for 
a  moral  holiday,  this  conception  of  the  Absolute  he  calls  in  so 
far  true,  even  while  he  adds  that  he  himself  prefers  not  to 
accept  this  truth  because  for  him  it  comes  into  conflict  with 
other  truths.  The  greatest  enemy  of  any  one  of  our  truths 
may  be  the  rest  of  our  truths,  he  goes  on  to  say,  in  answer  to 
the  charge  that  pragmatism  gives  us  the  right  to  believe  what- 
ever we  please.^  The  ordinary  man  would  find  no  difficulty  in 
admitting  that,  for  particular  purposes,  a  belief  which  it  is  our 
duty  to  reject  might  be  more  or  less  useful,  or  satisfying;  but 
when  this  is  called  a  true  belief,  he  is  apt  to  feel  that  liberties 
^Pragmatism,  p.  78. 


William  James  377 

are  being  taken  with  his  parts  of  speech.  What  James  prob- 
ably has  in  mind  is  not  a  true  belief,  but  a  belief  that  something 
is  true;  and  that  there  is  a  close  connection  between  satisfac- 
tion and  belief  will  no  doubt  be  found  in  some  significant  sense 
to  be  the  case. 

8.  The  third  interpretation  which  James  gives  to  the  prag- 
matic conception  of  knowledge  is  altogether  the  most  clear-cut 
and  distinctive  one.  It  is  his  own  special  contribution  to  the 
problem;  and  though  it  connects  only  somewhat  loosely  with 
the  preceding  considerations,  it  has  a  highly  important  bear- 
ing on  other  and  more  metaphysical  doctrines  with  which  his 
interest  became  increasingly  identified.  The  theory,  briefly 
stated,  is  as  follows:  Knowledge  is  a  function  of  experience, 
a  particular  sort  of  relation  between  its  terms.  When  I  say 
that  I  know  an  object,  what  I  really  mean  is  that  some  present 
fact  of  experience  has  the  power,  by  a  series  of  continuous 
transitions,  to  lead  me  to  the  actual  presence  of  the  object — 
to  the  perceptual  experience,  namely,  which  is  the  object's  pres- 
ence. Knowledge  is  thus  an  affair  wholly  of  transitions  and 
leadings  within  experience.  And  whenever  any  idea  thus  leads 
to  an  end  term  which  is  found  to  be  satisfying,  in  that  it  carries 
the  sense  of  being  the  goal  toward  which  the  process  has  been 
aiming,  it  thereby  becomes  true.  Truth  is  successful  func- 
tioning or  pointing  in  this  particular  form;  by  the  very  fact 
of  a  satisfactory  completion,  the  starting  point  becomes  a 
knower,  the  terminus  an  object  known.  The  idea  may  be  a 
copy  of  its  object,  or  the  two  may  have  practically  nothing 
in  common;  the  point  is  immaterial  so  long  as  the  trail  leads 
us  to  our  destination. 

The  chief  plausibility  of  the  transition-feeling  theory  of 
knowledge  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  offers  a  concrete  analysis  of 
the  act  of  "pointing,"  or  "referring"  to  an  object.  A  mere 
image  has,  as  we  look  at  it,  no  discoverable  self-transcendence 
or  inner  duplicity;  it  is  simply  what  it  is.  And  yet  in  knowl- 
edge the  idea  does  evidently  somehow  connect  with  what  lies 


378       English  and  American  Philosophy 

beyond  its  own  boundaries.  Three  alternatives  are  open.  We 
may  leave  the  fact  a  sheer  mystery;  or  we  may  appeal  to  some 
outside  agent,  like  Royce's  Absolute,  to  do  the  connecting;  or, 
with  James,  we  may  add  to  the  existence  of  the  image  a  further 
"function."  And  how,  James  asks,  can  such  a  function  be  con- 
ceived, if  not  as  a  power  of  leading,  of  getting  us  to  the  object 
of  our  cognitive  interest?  And  if  knowledge  is  thus  only  a 
function,  then  truth  must  be  definable  in  terms  of  successful 
functioning,  and  consequences,  in  the  form  of  a  satisfactory 
issue,  will  constitute  its  essential  nature. 

9.  The  first  comment  that  seems  called  for  here  has  to 
do  with  a  point  already  dwelt  upon  in  other  connections. 
James'  description  simply  does  not  cover  certain  things  which 
the  term  knowledge  has  always  been  understood  to  imply. 
There  is  indeed  one  harmless  meaning  which  there  is  no  occa- 
sion to  dispute.  It  is  only  at  the  termination  of  the  process  of 
verification,  James  remarks,  that  we  know  for  certain;  and  if 
we  mean  by  truth  only  what  is  known  of  a  certainty  to  be  true, 
no  empiricist  at  least  need  hesitate  to  identify  this  with  truth 
that  has  been  verified.  But  it  still  remains  open  to  question 
whether  the  verifying  process  constitutes  the  claim  to  be  true, 
or  only  substantiates  it.  When  we  speak  of  verifying  truth, 
we  surely  do  not  mean  to  speak  of  verifying  our  verification. 
James'  speech  is  all  the  time  betraying  him;  thus  when  he 
remarks  that  the  pragmatist  cannot  warrant  the  judgment  that 
his  own  theory  is  true  really,  but  can  only  believe  it,^  clearly  the 
belief  attaches  to  something  other  than  the  warrant  he  con- 
fesses he  cannot  obtain. 

And  what  this  something  is,  is  reasonably  simple;  it  is  not 
that  a  certain  consequence  is  going  to  happen,  but  that  a  cer- 
tain situation  has  as  a  matter  of  fact  a  specific  nature  char- 
acterized by  specific  qualities  and  relations.  And  the  verifi- 
cation, if  it  comes,  is  simply  a  way  of  making  me  feel  certain 
that  I  was  right  in  affirming  this  character.  The  realities,  to 
^Meaning  of  Truth,  p.  213. 


William  James  379 

quote  James  himself  again,  are  believed  only  because  their 
notions  appear  true,  and  their  notions  appear  true  only  because 
they  work  satisfactorily;  this  does  not  mean  that  the  notions 
appear  to  work  satisfactorily  because  they  work  satisfactorily. 
And  indeed  if  it  were  not  for  the  confusion  which  his  own  con- 
flicting utterances  introduce,  it  would  not  be  necessary  to  labor 
the  matter,  since  on  occasion  James  concedes  all  that  there 
is  any  need  to  claim.  That  truth  is  predetermined  by  the 
event's  nature,  that  the  existence  of  the  object  is  the  only  rea- 
son in  innumerable  cases  why  the  idea  does  work  successfully, 
that  an  enormous  quantity  of  truth  may  be  written  down  as 
having  preexisted  to  its  perception  by  us  humans,  that  if  an 
hypothesis  is  satisfactory  we  must  believe  it  to  have  been  true 
anteriorly  to  its  formulation  by  ourselves  ^ — all  this  is  far  more 
easily  intelligible  on  the  supposition  that  truth  is  an  affirmation 
of  character,  than  on  the  supposition  that  it  is  a  process  of 
verification. 

10.  If  now  we  are  prepared  to  take  these  last  expressions 
seriously,  a  perplexity  confronts  James'  doctrine.  If  knowl- 
edge makes  a  genuine  claim  to  reach  out  beyond  the  limits  of 
the  knowing  experience,  and  to  grasp  by  anticipation  the  true 
nature  of  reality  not  present, — not  merely  future  experiences 
that  are  going  to  connect  on  to  my  present  one  through  a  series 
of  felt  transitions,  but,  conceivably,  any  sort  of  reality  any- 
where in  the  universe, — is  the  machinery  for  this  provided  in 
his  description  of  the  knowing  process?  On  the  surface  this 
description,  if  taken  without  qualification,  limits  knowledge 
to  the  series  of  transitive  facts  that  constitute  some  specific 
knowing  experience,  and  to  the  sort  of  unity  we  commonly  call 
psychological;  and  in. that  case  it  becomes  incumbent  to  ex- 
plain how  it  escapes  the  traditional  difficulties  of  subjectivism. 

As  a  preliminary  to  answering  this  question,  it  is  necessary 
to  say  a  word  first  about  the  wider  metaphysical  setting  in 
which  James*  theory  of  knowing  is  intended  to  play  a  part. 
^Radical  Empiricism,  pp.  252,  254.    Meaning  of  Truth,  p.  xv. 


380       English  and  American  Philosophy 

The  doctrine  of  radical  empiricism,  to  an  interest  in  which 
James  came  to  subordinate  even  pragmatism,  has  indeed,  as 
will  be  noticed  presently,  pragmatic  consequences,  especially 
in  the  field  of  religion;  but  in  itself  it  is  a  metaphysical  doc- 
trine quite  as  technical  as  most  metaphysics,  and  as  far  re- 
moved from  immediate  ends  of  human  living.  It  stands  in 
the  first  place  for  the  belief  that  "experience"  is  a  self-sustain- 
ing reality  leaning  on  nothing  more  ultimate  for  its  support. 
It  is  made  up  of  no  one  peculiar  stuff,  psychical  or  otherwise, 
but  of  as  many  kinds  of  stuff  as  the  world  actually  presents, 
each  precisely  what  it  is  experienced  as;  each  bit  joins  on  to 
its  nearest  neighbor,  and  through  the  whole  run  innumerable 
threads  of  relationship.  But  the  continuities,  too,  are  to  be 
taken  for  just  what  we  find  them  to  be,  and  nothing  more; 
and  no  particular  kind  of  unity  is  absolute  and  all-embracing. 
The  bearings  of  this  are  best  understood  in  terms  of  alter- 
native doctrines  which  it  denies.  Thus  the  needlessness  of  ap- 
pealing to  anything  extraneous  to  hold  experience  together,  is  a 
repudiation  on  the  one  hand  of  the  "soul"  of  everyday  belief, 
— for  which  James'  early  physiological  training  seems  to  have 
given  him  a  special  antipathy, — and,  on  the  other,  of  the 
eternal  relating  principle  to  which  the  absolutists  appealed. 
Meanwhile  the  term  "radical"  is  meant  to  correct  the  error 
into  which  earlier  empiricists  had  fallen,  in  reducing  experi- 
ence to  its  substantive  or  sensational  features  alone,  and  failing 
to  see  that  the  connective  tissue  of  experience,  its  transitions 
and  relations,  are  equally  real  as  immediate  facts  of  feeling. 
II.  Into  this  field  of  pure  experience  knowledge,  in  terms 
of  the  feelings  of  transition  whose  absence  had  been  responsible 
for  the  atomic  sensationalism  of  the  older  psychology,  enters 
to  assume  the  role  of  the  unifying  agents  that  have  been  de- 
posed—the soul,  the  transcendental  ego,  and,  as  a  final  sub- 
limation, consciousness.  At  least  James  assigns  it  this  role. 
But  a  closer  scrutiny  reveals  certain  obscurities  in  his  posi- 
tion.   Even  as  a  substitute  for  the  soul  or  self,  knowledge  fails 


William  James  381 

to  serve  entirely  the  purpose  for  which  the  self  traditionally 
had  been  invoked ;  and  it  seems  to  serve  this  purpose  only  be- 
cause James  throws  together  two  quite  distinct  questions.  How 
can  one  thing  know  another? — this  is  the  proper  question  of 
knowledge.  But  in  resorting  to  knowledge  in  order  to  replace 
the  self,  this  turns  insensibly  into  the  very  different  question, 
How  can  the  various  elements  of  experience  be  united  to  form 
a  conscious  unity?  The  confusion  is  encouraged  by  James* 
disposition  to  use  the  terms  knowledge  and  consciousness  as 
synonymous.  Now  all  the  elements  in  the  experience  of  a  self 
may  intelligibly  be  held  to  be  co-conscious;  but  not  all  these 
elements  belong  to  the  series  of  felt  transitions  to  which  know- 
ing has  been  reduced.  To  say  nothing  of  the  feelings  and  emo- 
tions, there  are  sensations  and  images  also  that  stand  apart 
from  the  conscious  sense  of  meaning  and  direction;  they  are 
irrelevant  to  our  central  purposes,  and  drift  languidly  at  the 
edge  of  the  current,  as  in  the  case  of  many  of  our  fancies,  or 
are  submerged  in  the  obscurity  of  the  ''fringe."  Knowledge 
at  best,  therefore,  only  very  partially  explains  the  unity  of  a 
self.  James  has,  it  is  true,  another  theory  to  fall  back  on  here, 
a  theory  dating  back  to  the  days  of  the  Psychology,  but  utilized 
off  and  on  in  his  later  writings  also.  For  this,  each  passing 
thought  or  pulse  of  experience  is  a  knower  which  turns  past 
pulses  into  the  content  of  a  single  unitary  stream,  by  appro- 
priating them,  and  then  passing  on  its  inheritance  to  the  next 
succeeding  thought.  But  the  situation  is  not  bettered  by  hav- 
ing two  alternative  explanations  of  doubtful  consistency  with 
one  another;  for  the  knower  conceived  as  a  memory  act  through 
which  the  present  experience  attaches  to  its  train  past  ex- 
periences that  can  never  be  recalled, — granting  that  this  is 
an  account  of  knowledge  at  all, — is  clearly  different  from  a 
knower  constituted  such  by  the  ability  to  lead  through  a  series 
of  real  transitions  to  a  future  state  destined  to  be  also  real. 
12.  The  transition  theory  of  knowledge  is,  accordingly,  in- 
competent to  take  the  place  of  "consciousness"  as  an  explana- 


382        English  and  American  Philosophy 

tion  of  the  psychological  unity  of  experience,  since  it  covers  only 
a  portion  of  this  experience  content.  And  when  we  turn  to 
knowledge  in  its  proper  sense,  as  transcending  in  range  of  con- 
tent such  a  psychological  whole,  the  difficulties  are  multiplied. 
The  worid  of  pure  experience  is,  it  has  appeared,  a  world  of 
empirical  natures,  each  precisely  what  it  is  experienced  as, 
and  having  innumerable  lines  of  connection.  Now  these  rela- 
tionships within  pure  experience  are  only  to  a  very  minor 
degree  identical  with  the  serial  transitions  that  constitute  know- 
ing. Any  particular  bit  of  experience  may  become  known  by 
being  made  the  terminus  of  a  knowing  process;  but  it  has 
at  the  same  time  many  other  relationships  that  are  not  cogni- 
tive. This  indeed  supplies  the  basis  of  one  of  the  chief  merits 
that  James  attributes  to  his  theory;  it  is  devised  not  only  to 
get  rid  of  a  unifying  self,  or  substratum,  or  agent,  but  also 
of  that  dualism  between  perception  and  physical  object  which 
has  vexed  philosophers.  For  the  perceptual  experience  is  the 
object  in  a  particular  context;  the  percept  of  a  tree,  and  the 
physical  tree,  are  one  and  the  same  bit  of  pure  experience  taken 
twice  over,  once  in  connection  with  a  series  of  changes  that  be- 
long to  my  personal  life  history,  once  in  connection  with  per- 
sisting or  continuous  experience  that  makes  up  the  growth  of 
the  tree  as  a  natural  object,  and  its  contemporaneous  spatial 
and  causal  relationships  with  the  environment. 

Radical  empiricism  takes  for  granted,  then,  the  entire  world 
that  constitutes  the  stock  in  trade  of  human  intercourse,  not 
the  world  of  psychological  connections  merely.  But  while  we 
may  have  the  right  thus  to  postulate  the  real  world,  without 
waiting  to  deduce  it  from  a  theory  about  the  possibilities  of 
knowledge,  at  least  one  is  called  upon  to  show  that  he  is  as- 
suming nothing  which  his  theory  of  knowledge  will  not  allow 
him  to  believe  in  when  this  too  comes  to  be  added  to  his 
system.  And  whether  James'  theory  can  meet  this  test  suc- 
cessfully is  very  much  open  to  doubt.  Percept  and  object,  we 
have  been  told,  are  the  same  identical  fact  in  different  con- 


William  James  383 

texts.  But  knowledge  is  defined  as  belonging  only  to  one  of 
these  contexts,  the  psychological  one;  how  then  can  we  "know" 
the  other?  The  tree  in  its  physical  context  involves  elements 
of  pure  experience  in  which  our  present  knowing  thought  does 
not  terminate.  They  are,  but  they  are  not  experienced  in  the 
way  of  knowing;  how  accordingly  do  we  get  the  right  to  speak 
of  them?  It  is  only  within  the  range  of  our  experience  that, 
for  us,  felt  transitions  occur;  anything  that  is  not  an  actual 
object  of  perception  is  literally  separated  by  a  gap,  with  all 
transitive  intermediaries  lacking.  James'  own  answer  to  the 
objection  misses  its  point  completely.  The  answer  is,  that 
while  it  is  true  that  in  many  cases  our  thought  does  not  actually 
terminate  in  its  object,  it  does  terminate  in  something  in  the 
neighborhood  of  its  object — its  associates,  or  its  results,  or  its 
causes;  and  since  in  this  way  we  are  enabled  to  control  the 
object,  the  pragmatic  consequences  are  the  same  as  if  we  were 
dealing  with  it  directly.  Now  it  is  quite  true  that  nothing 
has  reality  for  our  knowledge  apart  from  some  point  of  attach- 
ment which  it  gets  to  objects  of  immediate  sense  experience; 
a  past  event  in  history,  for  example,  must  have  had  effects 
embodied  in  some  actual  present  form  of  existence,  to  allow  it 
to  be  brought  in  contact  with  us  at  all.  And  these  nearer  as- 
sociates may  often  serve  our  practical  purposes  sufficiently. 
But  the  question  is  not  how,  presupposing  a  competence  to 
refer  in  thought  to  objects  which  "experience"  does  not  reach, 
we  are  able  to  think  of  certain  objects  rather  than  of  others, 
but  how  this  presupposed  recognition  of  a  transcendent  object 
is  possible  at  all  if  knowing  is  nothing  but  a  series  of  experi- 
enced transitions  that  have  reached  their  goal.  James  im- 
ports his  own  knowledge  of  the  situation  into  the  mind  of 
the  knower  himself,  when  the  whole  point  of  the  criticism  is 
that  on  his  own  showing  there  is  no  way  for  it  to  get  there. 
At  best  all  that  James'  theory  provides  for  is  a  feeling  of  in- 
completeness in  the  cognitive  series,  as  if  something  more  were 
needed  to  round  it  out;  and  such  a  blind  and  inarticulate  sense 


384       English  and  American  Philosophy 

of  groping,  of  which  the  hunting  for  a  lost  name  might 
serve  as  an  example,  has  little  in  common  with  the  experi- 
ence of  meaning  in  thought  a  definite  object,  recognized  in 
terms  of  its  specific  nature.  It  is  hard  to  avoid  the  suspicion 
that  James  at  times  is  even  resorting  to  a  purely  verbal  trick, 
and  that  when  he  talks  of  the  "discontinuity"  experience  which 
I  cannot  avoid  having  when  I  try  to  make  the  transition,  say, 
from  my  experience  to  yours,  and  fail  in  the  attempt,  this  feel- 
ing of  a  gap  is  itself  taken  as  a  felt  transition  which  serves  to 
bridge  the  gap.^  But  of  course  it  does  nothing  of  the  sort.  If 
I  can  be  said  to  have  a  feeling  of  unlikeness,  or  of  discontinuity, 
in  passing  from  a  direct  acquaintance  with  my  own  life  to  the 
less  vivid  thought  of  another  man's  inner  self,  such  an  ex- 
perienced relation  holds  only  between  my  experience  and  this 
thought;  that  of  which  I  think  still  remains  a  thing  outside 
any  imity  of  immediate  experience  for  me. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  James'  case  is  still  worse  than  the  pre- 
ceding criticism  has  implied;  it  is  not  even  clear  how  it  can 
account  for  knowledge  where  the  felt  transitions  are  completed. 
Strictly,  if  we  follow  James'  account,  we  have  no  right  to  talk 
of  knowing  an  object  until  the  object  is  there  bodily  in  experi- 
ence; but  then  the  earlier  stage  will  no  longer  be  present  to 
constitute  it  known,  and  it  will  be  no  more  than  itself  existing 
as  a  bit  of  pure  experience.  At  best,— unless,  as  indeed  James 
seems  at  times  actually  to  imply,  knowing  be  regarded  as  not 
in  itself  an  experiencing  at  all,  but  only  the  impersonal  fact 
that  some  later  experience  is  on  the  way,^ — the  knower  can 
only  be  the  pure  experience  just  preceding,  and  the  experience 
can  only  know  its  immediate  successor;  but  this  is  wholly  out 
of  relation  to  what  concretely  we  mean  by  knowledge.  It  is 
absurd  to  say  that  I  do  not  know — cannot  think  of  truly — 
a  future  event,  but  only  know  the  first  step  necessary  to  lead 
me  to  that  event,  which  first  step  then  knows  the  second,  and 

^Radical  Empiricism,  p.  49.  *  Ibid.,  p.  57. 


William  James  385 

so  on.  It  is  possible  however  to  see  why  the  absurdity  fails 
to  strike  James,  if  we  turn  back  to  the  confusion  of 
problems  already  noted.  For  if  we  are  trying  to  explain, 
not  how  one  thing  can  know  another,  but  how  it  can  be 
joined  to  another  in  an  experienced  unity,  then  of  course  it 
is  only  two  immediately  contiguous  elements  that  thus  flow 
together. 

13.  It  remains  to  notice  briefly  the  pragmatic  consequences 
which  specially  recommend  radical  empiricism  to  James'  mind. 
And  here  things  take  a  rather  curious  turn.  The  ultimate  mo- 
tive to  which  James  confesses  for  his  final  philosophic  prefer- 
ences is  the  religious  one;  epistemological  dualism,  and  theism, 
and  souls,  separate  us  from  God,  and  thwart  the  craving  for 
immediate  union  and  identity  with  the  divine.  The  fact  is 
curious  because  it  is  clearly  on  the  road  to  that  ideal  of  unity 
toward  which,  as  a  critic  of  absolutism,  James  had  seemed  to 
show  dislike  rather  than  sympathy.  This  reversal  of  attitude 
has  two  main  aspects.  The  first  is  speculative,  and  centers 
about  the  notion  of  the  ''compounding"  of  consciousness.  A 
logical  difficulty  here  had  always  troubled  James,  and  in  the 
Psychology  had  led  him  to  repudiate  entirely  the  belief  that 
separate  mental  states  can  be  brought  together  into  a  unity. 
Nor,  he  frankly  admits,  has  his  difficulty  been  resolved;  and 
if  he  now  feels  justified  in  disregarding  it,  and  following  the 
religious  instinct,  it  is  simply  that  he  has  taken  heart  from 
Bergson,  and  is  prepared  to  abandon  logic.  To  estimate  fairly 
this  apparently  desperate  course  would  need  a  detailed  study; 
probably  it  is  not  as  bad  as  it  sounds.  James'  explanation  of 
his  meaning  seems  to  reduce  it  to  a  denial  of  the  possibility  of 
manipulating  the  abstract  concepts  of  the  one  and  the  many 
so  as  to  restore  their  fluidity,  and  generate  out  of  them  the 
reality  of  a  many-in-oneness.  We  cannot  explain  conceptually 
how  the  many  can  be  one,  but  can  only  dip  back  into  the  flow 
of  immediate  experience  itself,  and  find  that  the  fact  is  so; 


386       English  and  American  Philosophy 

and  in  repudiating  logic,  we  are  simply  giving  up  the  at- 
tempt of  philosophers  to  construct  reality  out  of  static  con- 
cepts.^ 

But  here,  as  frequently,  James  fails  to  distinguish  two  very 
different  things.  As  his  discussion  proceeds,  it  is  apparent  that 
what  for  the  most  part  he  is  thinking  of  is  the  standing  of 
that  sort  of  unity  which  each  man  knows  as  a  fact  in  his  own 
conscious  experience.  Even  here  an  ambiguity  is  present.  The 
inclusiveness  of  my  conscious  life,  whether  in  terms  of  what  is 
there  at  a  given  moment,  or  of  the  union  of  successive  moments, 
does  not  need  to  imply  "compounding,"  as  if  things  previously 
existing  in  separation  were  brought  together;  the  facts  would 
equally  be  satisfied  by  supposing  that  outside  this  growing 
and  expanding  unity  the  experiences  do  not  exist  at  all,  though 
other  experiences  more  or  less  similar  to  them  may.  James* 
new  doctrine  seems  to  imply  that  each  addition  to  my  unified 
life  was  already  waiting  outside  the  door  for  a  chance  to  enter, 
like  a  persisting  physical  element  which  forms  fresh  combina- 
tions with  other  elements;  and  this  there  is  nothing  in  the 
situation  to  render  necessary,  or  even  plausible.  But  in  any 
case  the  acceptance  of  a  continuity  of  consciousness  does  not 
remove  the  most  serious  objection  to  a  unity  of  God  and  man; 
much  more  important  logically  is  the  difficulty  of  understand- 
ing how,  if  my  life  is  a  part  of  God's  life,  it  can,  not  at  some 
previous  moment  before  it  has  been  appropriated,  but  at  the 
same  identical  moment,  be  one  thing  for  me,  and  quite  another 
for  him.  This  is  not,  as  James  seems  to  suppose,  a  difficulty 
raised  by  a  conceptual  logic,  through  its  insistence  that  a  term 
cannot  be  in  two  different  relations  without  becoming  intrinsi- 
cally a  different  term— a  difficulty  capable  of  being  settled  by 
an  appeal  to  fact.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  itself  based  on  a  mat- 
ter of  fact — that  certain  specifiable  aspects  of  experience  are 
actually  incompatible  with  a  more  inclusive  unity  of  conscious- 

^PlurdUstk  Universe,  pp.  281,  287;  Some  Problems  of  Philosophy, 
pp.  81,  97. 


William  James  387 

ness;  ignorance,  for  example,  cannot  enter  into  the  wider  con- 
text of  knowledge,  and  still  remain  itself. 

14.  More  interesting  however  than  this  logical  question,  is 
the  change  in  spirit  which  James'  new  position  involves,  and 
the  disappearance  of  that  insistent  demand  for  novelty,  for 
freedom,  for  pluralistic  independence,  of  which  he  had  made 
himself  the  spokesman.  For  such  a  recompounding  of  existing 
bits  of  flat  experience  is  as  stale  and  unprofitable  as  the 
recombining  of  atoms,  though  the  patterns  may  be  more 
variegated.  And  say  what  we  will,  to  begin  to  make  terms  with 
a  panpsychist  philosophy  like  that  of  Fechner,  is  to  move 
inevitably  in  the  direction  of  binding  all  the  things  that  really 
count  for  us  together  in  the  unity  of  a  single  whole.  If  there 
is  a  great  reservoir  in  which  the  memories  of  earth's  inhabitants 
are  pooled  and  preserved;  if  consciousness  preexists  already 
behind  the  scenes  coeval  with  the  world,  and  is  not  generated 
de  novo  in  a  vast  number  of  places;  if  it  is  only  the  phenom- 
enal interposition  of  a  brain  or  nervous  system  that  gives  to 
experience  its  various  special  forms,  and  separates  it  into  parts; 
if  I  in  my  apparent  individuality  am  only  a  marginal  content 
of  a  greater  self,  my  energies  the  overflow  from  its  superfluity, 
and  my  new  experiences  a  shifting  of  the  threshold ;  if  the  ideal 
of  truth,  of  satisfying  knowledge,  is  a  total  conflux  of  mind 
with  reality,^— how  are  we  any  more  virtuous  than  the  idealist 
and  the  absolutist?  James  continues  to  insist  that  the  day  is 
saved  so  long  as  the  unity  is  not  ^//-inclusive,  and  some  portions 
of  experience  are  left  outside  God's  life.^  And  this  does  preserve 
one  speculative  advantage;  if  God  is  not  literally  the  whole, 
he  has  a  chance  to  escape  responsibility  for  evil.  But  at  best, 
in  falling  back  on  this,  all  the  pragmatic  motives  are  transferred 
to  an  Olympian  world.  It  is  for  the  life  of  God,  or  of  the  Gods, 
that  freedom,  and  pluralism,  and  a  loose  universe  are  saved; 

^Pluralistic  Universe,  pp.  2go,  2Qg;   Human  Immortality,  pp.  23,  27, 

Sl-2. 

"Pluralistic  Universe,  pp.  125,  294,  312. 


388        English  and  American  Philosophy 

meanwhile  our  human  world  falls  wholly  within  the  embrace 
of  a  wider  spirit,  even  though  not  an  infinite  one.  In  thus 
consenting  to  sacrifice  the  autonomy  and  independence  and 
creativeness  of  man  to  the  craving  for  a  mystical  and  religious 
union  with  the  divine,  James  comes  so  close  after  all  to  the 
absolutism  of  Royce,  that  it  is  hard  to  detect  differences  of 
pragmatic  importance. 

§  3.    John  Dewey 

I.  In  turning  to  John  Dewey,  the  third  of  the  leading  ex- 
ponents of  pragmatism,  the  puzzling  mixture  of  motives  which 
has  so  far  complicated  the  task  of  exposition  is  no  longer  con- 
spicuously in  evidence.  The  difficulties  here  lie  rather  in  cer- 
tain subtleties  in  the  attitude  itself.  As  in  the  case  of  Idealism, 
though  along  very  different  lines,  the  strategy  of  Dewey's  cam- 
paign lies  in  a  flanking  movement,  which  aims  not  so  much 
to  solve  traditional  problems  as  to  render  them  meaningless, 
and  undeserving  of  serious  attention.  And  first  accordingly 
it  will  be  useful  to  indicate  again  the  standpoint  that  will  be 
presupposed  as  a  background  in  the  account  which  follows, 
especially  since  this  does  not  receive  a  very  sympathetic  treat- 
ment at  Dewey's  hands. 

There  are  three  easily  distinguishable  problems  that  might  be 
set  for  the  philosopher  by  different  aspects  of  the  knowledge  sit- 
uation, if  we  take  the  familiar  starting  point  of  everyday  belief. 
This  without  any  question  holds  that  knowledge  is  an  act  per- 
formed by  some  particular  human  individual,  in  his  endeavor 
to  make  himself  acquainted  with  a  surrounding  world  with 
which  it  is  to  his  interest  to  come  to  terms.  The  enterprise  he 
carries  on  through  the  medium  of  his  own  perceptions  and 
thoughts  and  ideas, — ^his  own  in  some  sense,  in  spite  of  the  un- 
doubted fact  that  what  he  is  perceiving  or  thinking  about  is 
reality  itself,  and  not  his  private  thoughts  or  sensations.  Now 
the  problem  of  epistemology  in  the  narrowest  sense  has  to  do 


John  Dewey  389 

simply  with  the  implications  of  this  apparent  fact  that  the 
knowing  thought  and  the  object  known  are  not  one  thing  but 
two,  that  knowing  is  always  man's  knowing,  and  that  man 
himself  is  very  obviously  only  a  minor  part  of  the  real  world 
that  forms  the  object  of  knowledge. 

With  the  dualism  that  on  the  surface  seems  to  be  involved 
here,  modern  philosophy  has  wrestled  long  and  impatiently. 
In  the  determination  not  to  accept  it  as  it  stands,  it  first  experi- 
mented in  every  possible  direction  with  an  idealistic  solution, 
which  aimed  to  overcome  the  dualism  by  denying  reality  to 
an  independent  object.  And  accordingly  in  absolute  ideahsm, 
where  the  aim  was  most  successfully  carried  out,  the  episte- 
mological  problem  takes  on  an  entirely  new  meaning,  by  con- 
necting itself  with  a  different,  though  equally  real,  aspect  of 
the  knowledge  situation.  Here  knowledge  is  interpreted, 
namely,  in  terms  wholly  of  the  relational  or  descriptive  content 
in  which  for  purposes  of  thought  the  "character"  of  true  reality 
is  found.  The  idealists  never  quite  succeeded  in  putting 
wholly  out  of  sight  the  fact  that  this  is  a  content  judged  to 
be  the  character  of  reality  by  a  human  knower;  but  by  throw- 
ing all  the  weight  of  eulogistic  emphasis  on  the  eternal  nature 
of  the  what  of  knowledge,  and  by  making  much  of  the  merely 
temporal  and  empirical  and  imperfect  character  of  the  finite 
knower  and  his  knowing  act,  they  manage  to  leave  the  impres- 
sion that  this  last  is  too  insignificant  to  be  allowed  to  divert 
us  from  the  grander  spectacle  of  an  absolute  and  timeless  whole 
of  truth.  However,  this  is  an  evasion,  which  still  leaves  the 
problem  of  the  individual  knower  in  the  background.  In 
Dewey,  a  further  step  is  taken  in  the  form  of  an  expHcit  and 
logically  defended  denial  that  experience  attaches  to  an  experi- 
encer,  or  knower,  in  any  sense;  and  he  does  this  by  limiting 
his  account  of  knowledge  to  still  a  third  aspect,  distinguishable 
alike  from  the  act  of  external  reference,  and  from  the  ex- 
plication of  logical  content. 

2.    This  aspect  is  the  active  process  of  thinking,  or  judging. 


7 


390       English  and  American  Philosophy 

Dewey  sets  out  to  show,  in  opposition  primarily  to  the  idealist's 
preoccupation  with  a  finished  logical  system,  that  knowledge  as 
logical  content  is  subordinate  to  knowledge  as  a  functional  part 
of  experience.  We  think  not  for  the  sake  of  thinking,  but  as 
a  stage  in  the  business  of  living.  Reason  is  not  something 
handed  down  from  above  to  constitute  experience  rational; 
it  is  something  that  happens  to  experience  under  certain  de- 
finable conditions.  So  long  as  life  moves  smoothly,  we  do 
not  think — we  act.  It  is  only  when  the  impulses  that  normally 
lead  to  action  conflict  with  one  another,  and  the  issue  becomes 
confused  and  doubtful,  that  we  have  to  call  a  halt  to  the  im- 
mediate business  of  living  and  enjoying,  and  turn  our  attention 
rather  to  the  means  of  reconstructing  our  interrupted  activity. 
This  last  is  what  constitutes  the  special  phase  of  experience 
which  we  call  thinking,  and  with  which  the  term  knowledge 
is  now  exclusively  to  be  identified.  In  such  a  mediating  proc- 
ess, a  diremption  of  experience  for  the  first  time  comes  about. 
On  the  one  hand  there  emerges  the  "fact,"  the  object,  the  datum, 
— those  elements  of  the  situation,  namely,  the  outcome  of 
past  experience  crystallized  in  habit,  which,  while  they  are  not 
final,  else  the  need  for  reconstruction  would  not  have  arisen, 
are  yet  sufficiently  stable  for  us  to  count  upon  them  for  the  mo- 
ment, and  look  to  them  to  furnish  the  material  out  of  which  the 
new  and  desired  method  of  control  can  be  constructed.  And  on 
the  other  hand  there  is  the  concept  or  idea,  which,  on  the  basis 
of  the  given,  attempts,  in  the  form  of  an  hypothesis  or  plan 
of  action,  to  effect  this  reconstruction.  And  the  validity  or 
truth  of  the  idea  is  reducible  therefore  to  its  success  or  failure 
in  the  task;  "that  which  guides  us  truly,  is  true." 

The  articulated  logical  content  of  science  which  idealism 
had  exalted  as  the  supreme  end  of  knowledge,  is,  accordingly, 
nothing  final;  it  stands  only  for  the  advisability  of  providing 
instruments  for  the  control  of  conduct  before  the  immediate 
need  actually  arises.  The  business  of  science  is  to  analyze  the 
given,  with  the  intent  of  discovering  cues  to  action  more  de- 


John  Dewey  391 

pendable  than  those  which  a  crude  unanalyzed  experience  can 
supply.  It  is  most  useful  that  this  specialized  business  should 
be  turned  over  to  the  professional  thinker,  who  thus  may  ap- 
pear to  be  interested  in  thought  for  its  own  sake.  But  the 
justification  for  his  work  is  nevertheless  always  the  service 
to  which  it  can  be  put  for  the  needs  of  conduct  in  the  concrete; 
and  what  he  discovers  is  not  final  "truth,"  but  simply  a  set 
of  tools  that  have  to  be  applied  to  this  or  that  particular  situ- 
ation before  anything  deserving  to  be  called  truth  arises.  For 
the  true  object  of  the  judgment  is  always,  in  the  end,  a  prac- 
tical issue,  relating  to  what  we  are  called  upon  to  do;  knowing 
has  reference  only  to  the  future,  and  is  neither  a  contemplative 
survey  of  existence,  nor  the  working  out  of  a  timeless  dialectical 
process. 

And  here  comes  in  the  fundamental  motive  of  Dewey's  whole 
philosophy;  it  is  an  attempt  to  furnish  a  sound  logical  basis 
for  progress — ^progress  in  the  individual,  but  still  more  in  the 
social  world.  Pragmatism  is  an  experimental  use  of  intelligence 
to  liberate  and  liberalize  action.  It  looks  to  a  growing  rather 
than  a  static  world ;  thinking  is  not  the  reduplication  of  reality 
already  complete,  but  the  actual  method  of  social  advance,  a 
method  that  is  to  free  us  alike  from  the  unchanging  ideals  of 
obscurantism,  and  from  the  spasmodic  demand  for  novelty  or 
freedom,  working  under  no  principle  of  control  from  the  past. 
It  is  the  logic  of  rational  evolution,  where,  along  with  a  con- 
stant alertness  to  the  novelties  in  the  situation,  and  an  ab- 
sence of  undue  subservience  to  the  past,  the  new  is  at  the  same 
time  connected  with  the  old  in  an  orderly  and  sober  fashion. 

3.  If  it  is  really  so  that  the  object  of  thought  is  always  an 
end  of  action,  or  an  ideal,  there  is  plausibility  in  the  claim 
that  it  is  progressively  constructed  by  the  thinking  process, 
instead  of  being  present  all  along  as  a  ready-made  standard  by 
which  thought  constructs  are  externally  measured.  Here  is 
precisely  the  quarrel  between  the  conservative  and  the  liberal 
or  radical  temper.    Liberalism,  if  it  is  to  be  effective,  is  com- 


392       English  and  American  Philosophy 

mitted  to  the  logic  of  a  social  end  which  is  not  a  blanket  con- 
cept unambiguously  given  once  for  all,  and  calling  upon  us 
merely  to  square  each  new  act  with  it  conscientiously;  this 
is,  with  the  best  of  intentions,  to  play  into  the  hands  of  the 
opponents  of  change.  The  ideal  literally  grows  out  of  experi- 
ence itself;  and  not  out  of  experience  in  general,  but  of  par- 
ticular experiential  situations  where  alone  it  gets  specific 
content,  and  where  its  relevancy  is  open  to  test.  As  against 
that  conception  of  the  practical  judgment  for  which  the  par- 
ticular case  is  only  a  misrepresentation  of  the  totality  of  truth, 
and  the  concrete  act  of  thinking  a  logical  irrelevance,  this  has 
much  to  say  for  itself.  But  it  has  no  force  against  a  common- 
sense  realism  and  personalism  which  entertains  no  prejudice 
against  change.  Dewey  himself  came  to  pragmatism  by  way 
of  English  Hegelianism,  and  he  inherited  its  lack  of  concern 
for  the  connection  of  knowledge  with  a  human  knower;  and 
accordingly  in  repudiating  the  intellectualism  of  the  idealists, 
it  apparently  did  not  occur  to  him  to  reconsider  their  attitude 
here  as  well.  Instead,  his  absorption  in  the  process  of  "think- 
ing" strengthens  his  antipathy  to  the  problem  of  epistemology 
as  a  human  reference  of  thought  to  reality  as  such;  the  rela- 
tion of  thought  to  reality  by  definition  turns  for  him  into  a 
quite  different  relation — that  of  thinking  to  a  particular  situ- 
ation. 

Nevertheless  the  fact  remains  that  there  at  least  is  nothing 
in  the  motive  of  liberalism  to  justify  this  antipathy.  A  com- 
mon-sense dualism  of  thoughts  and  things  has  no  need  to  deny 
that  ideals  are  constructed  by  thinking  rather  than  given  ready- 
made,  or  that  the  ultimate  purpose  of  thinking  lies  in  its  relation 
to  values.  Its  own  special  problem  does  not  compete  with  this 
at  all.  Why  should  not  ideals  be  realized,  as  they  seem  to  be, 
by  human  individuals  within  a  world  of  determinate,  yet  more 
or  less  plastic  reality?  or  why  should  the  recognition  of  this  be 
incompatible  with  a  constant  growth  in  the  ends  to  the  realizing 
of  which  a  knowledge  of  the  conditions  of  attainment  is  ulti- 


John  Dewey  39j 

mately  to  be  put?  This  recognition  does  not  tell  us  anything 
in  detail  about  the  process  of  thinking,  any  more  than  about 
the  logical  content  of  the  ideas  through  which  reality  is  de- 
scribed. It  is  a  presupposition  which  tacitly  underlies  these 
— the  presupposition  that  our  thinking  and  our  thoughts  are 
concerned  with  independent  reals,  and  are  not  mere  psychology, 
or  mere  logic.  But  because  it  is  a  different  problem,  it  does 
not  follow  that  it  is  an  unimportant  one  in  its  place.  Mean- 
while the  present  point  is,  that  if  an  interest  in  plastic  social 
ideals  is  to  constitute  our  fundamental  motive,  there  is  in 
so  far  pragmatically  no  reason  to  set  up  pragmatism  as  a  dis- 
tinctive metaphysics,  in  opposition  to  the  realistic  and  dualistic 
beliefs  of  common  sense. 

And  indeed  there  is  a  pragmatic  reason  against  it,  since  it 
leads  inevitably  to  argumentative  subtleties  that  detract  so 
much  from  the  force  of  the  practical  appeal  to  general  belief. 
For  it  cannot  be  denied  that  in  the  interest  of  making  all  judg- 
ments practical,  and  all  objects  of  knowledge  ideals,  Dewey  has 
created  a  highly  speculative  philosophy,  whose  practical  value 
seems  at  best  only  the  negative  one  of  clearing  away  supposed 
mental  obstacles  to  change  and  reconstruction;  and  since  its 
own  metaphysical  peculiarities  are  far  more  obscure  and  doubt- 
provoking  than  the  practical  attitude  for  which  they  are  in- 
tended to  supply  a  foundation,  they  are  liable  to  weaken,  rather 
than  increase,  the  possible  influence  for  good  which  philosophy 
may  exert.  It  is  not  obvious  how  the  turning  of  philosophy 
from  the  work  of  interpreting  reality — a  fluid  reality,  it  may 
well  turn  out  to  be — into  a  "method"  merely,  has  supplied  us 
with  any  practical  tool  for  the  rectifying  of  specific  social  ills 
— the  task  to  which  it  appears  that  philosophy  is  for  the  future 
to  confine  itself;  Dewey's  analysis  is  perfectly  general,  and 
leaves  concrete  questions,  as  before,  to  the  familiar  methods 
of  common  sense  and  good  judgment,  enlightened  by  expert 
knowledge.  One  may  be  justified  in  centering  his  own  atten- 
tion upon  the  logic  of  conduct,  or  of  ethics.    But  he  is  going 


394       English  and  American  Philosophy 

out  of  his  way  to  make  unnecessary  trouble  when  he  insists 
that  the  ethical  problem  is  for  man  the  only  legitimate  one, 
and  that  it  supplants  the  need  for  paying  any  attention  to 
questions  about  the  nature  of  the  real  world  in  which  the  ethical 
situation  arises,  or  about  the  way  in  which  we  are  able  to 
know  this  world.  Ethical  edification,  no  more  than  religious 
edification,  can  safely  precede  an  impartial  scrutiny  of  fact. 

4.  What  then,  more  precisely,  is  the  nature  of  Dewey's 
pragmatism,  considered  as  a  distinctive  philosophy,  and  what 
are  the  reasons  for  questioning  its  claims?  We  may  start  by 
putting  ourselves  at  the  point  of  view  of  an  outside  observer, 
in  the  presence  of  a  fact  of  conduct.  There  is  here  a  per- 
fectly objective  situation,  focussing  in  a  human  organism  that 
reacts  to  express  its  various  needs  and  impulses.  In  such 
an  organism  there  are  some  reactions  which  are  habitual  or 
automatic,  while  others,  again,  we  should  characterize  as  in- 
telligent; and  these  last  we  should  probably  on  examination 
connect  in  some  fashion  with  a  capacity  for  making  adjust- 
ments to  novel  features  in  the  situation,  adjustments  not  pro- 
vided for  by  familiar  ways  of  response.  Accordingly  the  locus 
of  intelligence  may  plausibly  be  looked  for  in  connection  with 
the  process  whereby,  in  terms  of  a  future  and  as  yet  unrealized 
end,  organic  habits  are  reconstructed  to  meet  conditions  which 
otherwise  would  bring  the  life  activity  to  a  halt. 

So  far  we  have  been  taking  over  without  question  the  plain 
man's  assurance  of  the  familiar  facts  he  finds  about  him;  we 
have  viewed  the  matter  from  the  standpoint  of  an  observer, 
assumed  to  be  competent  to  know  what  is  going  on  in  the  world. 
All  that  such  an  observer  can  behold  is  behavior,  in  a  definite 
and  literal  sense — bodies  changing  their  spatial  position  in  cer- 
tain discoverable  ways  with  reference  to  other  bodies;  no 
question  has  so  far  arisen  of  any  kind  of  fact  other  than  the 
physical,  which  includes  of  course  a  physical  nervous  system 
inside  the  surface  of  the  body.  For  many  purposes  this  is  a 
defensible  attitude.    Science  certainly  has  the  undoubted  right 


John  Dewey  395 

to  assume  without  question  that  there  are  things  to  be  ex- 
amined, and  that  these  things  are  capable  of  being  known. 
But  philosophy  can  hardly  afford  to  be  equally  complaisant. 
Two  features  in  particular  complicate  the  situation  for  the  phi- 
losopher. When  the  scientist  examines  physical  behavior  he 
does  not,  or  he  need  not,  commit  himself  to  any  opinion  about 
other  things  that  claim  also  to  be  real.  But  a  philosopher  is 
concerned  with  the  whole  of  reality.  He  cannot  therefore  take 
behavior  as  his  sole  field  of  inquiry,  without  dogmatically  ex- 
cluding as  illusions  the  other  things  that  people  have  called 
non-physical;  and  this  will  need  something  more  than  a  phi- 
losopher's assertion  to  make  it  stick.  Further,  the  scientist 
has  a  right  to  forget,  when  he  is  dealing  with  his  objects,  that 
there  is  an  outside  observer — the  scientist  himself — ^by  whom 
the  world  of  objects  is  known ;  this,  as  a  constant  factor  in  the 
situation,  is  of  interest  to  him  only  as  it  appears  to  be  intro- 
ducing perturbations  into  his  methods  of  observation.  Never- 
theless the  observer  and  his  knowledge  are  actually  a  part  of 
the  total  world;  and  for  the  philosopher,  who  deals  with  the 
situation  as  a  whole,  it  may  become  important  to  inquire  what 
this  possibility  of  knowing  implies.  Knowledge  that  con- 
fessedly is  for  an  observer,  and  so  to  this  extent  other  than  the 
objects  of  knowledge,  cannot  afford  too  hastily  to  shake  itself 
free  from  the  epistemological  problem. 

In  so  far,  then,  as  Dewey  presupposes  this  first  account  of 
the  matter,  he  is  able  to  forego  for  philosophy  a  preliminary 
theory  of  reality  only  by  assuming  dogmatically  a  certain 
character  as  belonging  to  reality  to  start  with,  and  refusing  to 
submit  it  to  argument.  It  may  however  be  asked  to  what  ex- 
tent he  really  does  take  such  a  starting  point;  and  to  this  the 
answer  will  have  to  be  more  or  less  hesitating.  There  seems 
no  reason  to  doubt  that  his  words  sometimes  bear  precisely 
this  construction.  The  subject  of  experience  is  identified  with 
an  animal  organism,  whose  brain  is  expressly  called  an  organ 
of  a  certain  kind  of  behavior,  not  of  knowing  the  world.    Ex- 


396       English  and  American  Philosophy 

perience  is  defined  as  just  certain  modes  of  the  interaction  of 
natural  objects,  of  which  the  physical  body  happens  to  be  one; 
it  is  a  matter  of  sensori-motor  coordinations,  of  functions  and 
habits,  of  active  adjustments  and  readjustments,  of  coordina- 
tions and  activities  rather  than  of  states  of  consciousness.  Sub- 
jective and  private  things  are  merely  events  in  the  nervous 
system;  operations  of  knowing  are  natural  responses  of  the 
organism;  intellectual  analysis  is  ultimately  physical  and 
active;  inference  is  a  particular  form  of  behaving  to  a  given 
situation.^  On  the  other  hand,  this  is  not  the  only  account 
of  the  matter  which  he  gives.  And  because  it  is  not  the  only 
account,  it  becomes  particularly  important  to  determine  whether 
the  two  rival  descriptions  are  essentially,  or  only  verbally  dis- 
crepant, since  unless  we  are  dealing  with  a  doctrine  that  is  un- 
ambiguous, we  can  never  be  certain  of  our  ground.  There 
is  reason  for  believing  that  Dewey's  doctrine  is  not  unambigu- 
ous, and  that  the  discrepancy  is  sometimes  made  use  of  for 
evading  difficulties. 

5.  To  justify  this  claim,  it  will  be  useful  first  to  restate  the 
account  of  experience  in  a  way  to  bring  out  more  clearly  its 
peculiarities,  in  their  opposition  now  to  common-sense  belief. 
For  our  ordinary  prejudices,  nature  is  one  thing,  man's  inner 
life  of  conscious  experiencing  another;  and  it  is  precisely  the 
purpose  of  knowing,  as  one  aspect  of  the  conscious  life,  to 
overcome  ideally  the  separation,  so  that  natural  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  satisfying  action  may  be  anticipated  and  provided 
for.  Dewey  however,  in  refusing  to  attach  experience  to  an  in- 
dividual, rejects  this  dualistic  interpretation  of  the  physical  and 
the  psychical;  and  accordingly  he  is  compelled  to  retranslate 
the  situation  into  terms  that  fall  in  rather  less  naturally  with 
our  familiar  modes  of  expression.  The  sole  reality  is  now  a 
group  of  "things,"  perfectly  physical  and  objective,  conceived 

^Creative  Intelligence,  pp.  36,  37;  Influence  of  Darwin,  pp.  155,  157, 
Reconstruction  in  Philosophy,  p.  91 ;  Essays  in  Experimental  Logic,  pp. 

228,  332,  425. 


John  Dewey  397 

as  belonging  to  a  "situation"  that  calls  for  reconstruction. 
Knowledge  is  not  "our"  knowledge  oj  things;  in  the  knowledge 
process,  the  very  things  themselves  which  are  present  in  a  non- 
cognitive  and  non-psychical  way  in  perception,  undergo  change, 
and  become  psychical.  They  do  this  by  serving  as  signs  of  fu- 
ture possibilities  of  experience,  clues  to  the  sort  of  action  needed 
to  carry  life  forward;  a  "thing"  acting  as  a  clue  is  all  that  we 
mean  by  the  psychical.  The  whole  process  is  thus  a  continuous 
transformation  of  reality,  in  which  we  literally  make  the  idea 
true  by  modifying  it — or  the  thing — till  it  is  successful  in  meet- 
ing our  needs.  "Our"  needs,  it  is  natural  to  say  again;  though 
in  strictness,  the  needs  of  the  "situation"  would  be  more  exact. 
For  experience  here  is  not,  once  more,  the  experience  of  an 
individual,  of  you  or  me.  Experience  as  such  does  not  belong 
to  individuals,  but  individuals  belong  to  experience;  a  self, 
that  is,  like  everything  else,  is  what  it  is  experienced  as,  and 
consequently  there  is  no  self  until  the  recognition  of  a  self  arises 
— under  definable  conditions — in  the  experience  process. 

6.  Now  to  what  extent  does  this  new  reading  of  the  situa- 
tion in  which  knowledge  plays  a  part,  coincide  with  reality 
regarded  from  the  standpoint  of  the  scientific  observer  as  a 
biological  fact?  It  seems  evident  at  once  that  the  two  can 
be  made  to  agree,  if  at  all,  only  by  a  forced  interpretation.  In 
each,  to  be  sure,  we  succeed  verbally  in  keeping  within  the 
limits  of  a  "natural"  process  in  terms  of  "things";  but  while 
the  first  formulation  does  this  in  a  perfectly  unambiguous  and 
familiar  way,  the  second  introduces  large  complications.  What 
the  observer  sees  is  a  series  of  physical  changes  which  in  the 
nervous  system — in  a  manner  not  yet  fully  understood,  but 
supposedly  with  no  break  in  continuity — effects  a  harmony 
of  the  organism  and  its  activities  with  the  environment.  But 
these  nervous  processes  are  not  in  any  natural  sense  the  "things" 
of  the  common  world,  taking  on  new  and  mental  functions. 
External  energies  indeed  cooperate  with  organic  energies  in 
producing  neural  effects  that  involve  a  transformation  of  their 


398       English  and  American  Philosophy 

causes.  But  there  is  nothing  whatever  in  this  to  suggest  to 
the  scientist  Dewey's  description  of  "experience";  the  whole 
account  in  terms  of  experienced  content,  except  as  the  scientist's 
own  perceptual  experience  is  involved,  is  for  him  mythological. 

And  equally  on  the  side  of  the  "situation"  out  of  which  know- 
ing experiences  arise,  Dewey's  new  description  quite  fails  to 
fit  the  scientific  account  of  a  physical  universe  in  which  organ- 
isms originate,  and  to  which  they  react.  The  world  of  "experi- 
ence" is  a  very  different  world  from  this.  It  is  vaguely 
bounded,  confined  within  comparatively  narrow  limits,  incom- 
plete in  detail,  represented  equally  in  the  most  precise  experi- 
ence of  the  scientist,  and  in  the  befogged  and  confused  world 
of  him  who  rises  quickly  from  sleep  in  a  pitch-dark  room; 
"this  vagueness,  this  doubtfulness,  this  confusion,  is  the  thing 
experienced,  and,  qtia  real,  is  as  'good'  a  reality  as  the  self- 
luminous  vision  of  an  Absolute."  "Another  trait  of  every  res 
is  that  it  has  focus  and  context:  brilliancy  and  obscurity, 
conspicuousness  or  apparency,  and  concealment  or  reserve, 
with  a  constant  movement  of  redistribution."  ^  All  this  is  ir- 
relevant to  the  world  of  science;  to  the  observer  of  organic 
action,  every  physical  process  involved  is  on  a  level  as  regards 
definiteness  with  every  other,  and  the  focus — a  term  evi- 
dently taken  over  from  James'  account  of  the  "psychological" 
stream — is  at  best  only  a  very  misleading  figure  of  speech. 

It  is  not  until  we  discard  scientific  biology  altogether,  that 
Dewey's  second  and  most  distinctive  account  of  the  situation 
begins  to  take  on  meaning.  When  I  turn  back  and  scrutinize 
a  past  experience  of  my  own  in  terms  simply  of  what  it  was 
experienced  as  from  within,  then  indeed  I  find  something  that 
is  very  skilfully  described  in  Dewey's  analysis.  I  first  catch 
myself,  we  will  say,  engaged  in  action,  denuded  so  far  as  pos- 
sible of  introspective  interest,  or  of  the  need  for  reconstructive 
thought;  this  I  can  describe  as  a  sense  of  enjoyable  activity, 
going  on  in  what  is  a  part  of  the  experience  that  I  should 

^Influence  of  Darwin,  p.  236;  Essays  in  Experimental  Logic,  p.  6. 


John  Dewey  399 

recognize  as  a  world  of  things  and  persons.    These  "things,'^ 
however,  are  no  longer  the  enduring  and  scientifically  charac- 

P  terized  physical  objects  of  the  external  observer's  world.    Only 
a  few  of  the  characters  that  really  belong  to  them  in  this  latter 

\  world  are  at  the  moment  present  in  experience ;  they  come  and 
)  go  with  the  needs  of  my  particular  interest;  they  have  con- 
'  tinually  shifting  outlines  that  shade  off  into  a  dim  and  confused 
background;  in  short  they  are,  as  we  naturally  tend  to  say, 
not  things  in  their  own  existence,  but  things  as  I  experience  or 
take  cognizance  of  them  in  some  limited  human  situation.  Sup- 
pose now  I  meet  an  obstacle.  The  same  things  that  previously 
I  was  perceiving  and  reacting  to  automatically,  I  now  subject 
to  closer  intellectual  scrutiny  and  analysis;  they  may  intelli- 
gibly be  said,  as  experiences,  to  turn  from  perceptual  objects 
into  objects  of  thought.  But  such  an  abstract  and  concep- 
tualizing thought,  again,  still  leaves  the  observer's  objects  un- 
changed; these  do  not  lose  any  of  their  qualities,  or  gain  any; 
because  of  the  shifting  play  of  my  intellectual  attention  under 

jf  the  stress  of  particular  needs. 

7.  *Just  here  is  the  crucial  point  which  will  determine 
whether  or  not  one  is  to  be  able  to  call  himself  a  pragmatist 
in  Dewey's  sense.  Everything  that  has  just  been  said  conveys 
the  implication  that  I  can  call  this  situation  "experience" 
simply  because  it  is  my  experience — because  the  situation 
focusses  about  my  interests  and  my  organism,  and  objects  play 
their  part  as  ministering  to  these.  True,  it  does  not  lend 
itself  to  description  merely  .in  subjective  terms.  But  because 
in  experience  there  is  inherent  the  cognitive  recognition  of  a 
real  world,  we  have  no  right  to  assume  that  reality  itself  is 
reducible  just  to  immediately  experienced  content.  Logically, 
1  Dewey's  whole  position  rests  on  the  dictum  that  perceptions 
are  not  cases  of  knowledge;  and  this  itself  is  not  proven  by  ex- 
j  perience.  We  seem  in  perception,  on  the  contrary,  to  find  our- 
selves in  contact  with  what  transcends  any  immediately  ex- 
perienced fact.    And  in  the  end  the  sole  reason  offered  for  re- 


400        English  and  American  Philosophy 

i  fusing  to  accept  this  claim,  is  that  knowledge  cannot  have 
an  experience-transcending  function  because  knowing  is  noth- 
ing but  thinking,  inquiring,  solving  problems.  Dewey  defines 
knowledge  as  thinking,  and  thinking  in  terms  of  practical  ends; 
and  then  when  some  aspect  of  human  belief  fails  to  fit  this 
definition,  the  belief,  and  not  the  definition,  is  tacitly  assumed 
to  be  at  fault.  The  only  way  to  meet  this  is,  accordingly,  to 
reverse  the  method,  and  to  insist  that  definitions  should  be 
broad  enough  to  cover  our  natural  interpretation  of  the  facts. 

8.  The  first  and  least  disputable  charge,  from  such  a  stand- 
point, to  be  brought  against  the  identification  of  reality  with 
experience,  is  that  in  any  case  it  leaves  no  meaning  to  our 
natural  conviction  that  a  real  universe  exists  anterior  to  or- 
ganic life,  out  of  which  organisms  have  themselves  evolved. 
Dewey  expressly  defines  experience  as  the  intercourse  of  a 
'  living  being  with  the  physical  and  social  environment;  wher- 
ever there  is  experience, — and  so  wherever  there  is  reality, — 
there  must  be  a  living  organism.^  This  means,  if  it  means 
anything,  that  reality  has  no  content  for  us  except  in  terms  of 
the  activities  of  organisms.  For  science,  however,  the  organic 
situation  is  plainly  not  reality,  but  only  one  particular  form 
that  reality  may  assume;  there  is  no  reason  at  all  apparent  for 
reducing  the  cosmos  to  the  necessity,  if  it  is  to  maintain  its 
status,  of  cooperating  in  some  human  act.  Even  for  biology, 
the  central  role  of  organic  action  is  due  not  to  anything  in  the 
nature  of  reality,  but  simply  to  a  selective  interest  in  a  special 
problem;  this  activity  becomes  a  point  from  which  all  reality 
may  be  said  to  radiate  only  when  we  shift  our  standing,  and 
take,  instead,  the  position  of  an  inner  witness,  an  active  agent, 
or  doer,  or  experiencer,  interested  not  in  impersonal  and  scien- 
tific observation,  but  in  "living.'^ 

And  when  we  make  this  shift,  it  becomes  much  less  easy  to 
meet  the  objection  that  "experience"  is  being  taken  no  longer 
as  reality,  in  any  commonly  accepted  sense,  but  as  some  par- 

^  Creative  Intelligence,  p.  8;  Essays  in  Experimental  Logic,  p.  7. 


John  Dewey  401 

ticular  person^s  experience — a  psychological  and,  when  it  is 
properly  defined,  "subjective"  fact.  These  "things"  which 
enter  into  experience  are  my  perceptions  and  thoughts  of  things, 
utilized  for  the  limited  purposes  of  an  individual  organism; 
and  such  knowledge  does  not  cease  to  be  my  knowing  be- 
cause the  situation  which  I  recognize  is  an  objective  one. 
Dewey's  reason  for  denying  the  identification  of  experience 
with  my  experience, — that,  namely,  the  self  is  a  form  of  ex- 
perience, and  not  experience  a  possession  of  the  self, — holds 
only  when  the  point  at  issue  is  already  prejudged.  //  reality 
means  only  what  it  is  experienced  as,  and  ij  knowledge  has  no 
dimension  except  as  a  process  of  inquiry,  then  the  "self"  must 
come  into  being  only  with  the  explicit  experience  or  recog- 
nition of  a  self.  But  the  whole  claim  breaks  down  in  the 
face  of  the  pragmatist's  own  assumption  of  a  "situation"  which 
is  larger  than  the  thinking  process  itself.  The  fact  plainly  is, 
that  if  we  presuppose  a  state  of  affairs  within  which  thinking 
or  knowledge  enters  as  a  subordinate  stage,  this  non-cognitional 
situation,  if  it  is  to  be  talked  about  at  all,  must  be  known  by 
someone  as  existing  in  its  own  right,  and  not  merely  as  a  case 
of  knowing,  which  by  definition  it  is  not;  and  then  there  must 
be  propositions  true  about  it  which  are  not  a  part  of  what 
it  was  experienced  as.  To  hold  that  the  object  perceived 
or  acted  on  passes  wholly  into  the  object  as  known,  this  last 
being  a  subsequent  and  altered  form  of  it,  and  that  there  is 
no  transcendent  reference  back  to  the  non-cognitional  experi- 
ence, is  for  the  original  "thing"  simply  to  disappear  from  the 
universe  of  reflective  discourse,  save  for  a  non-natural  philos- 
opher standing  outside  the  world  and  contemplating  it,  freed 
from  the  limitations  which  the  definition  of  knowledge  imposes. 
A  fearsome  noise — a  purely  non-cognitive  reality — changes, 
we  are  told,  into  a  harmless  and  familiar  one  under  the  in- 
fluence of  cognitive  analysis;  but  how  then  do  we  "know"  what 
it  was  before  it  changed,  so  as  to  contrast  it  with  its  altered 
appearance  as  known? 


402        English  and  American  Philosophy 

Once  more  we  find  the  difficulty  met  only  by  the  process 
of  arbitrary  definition.  A  past  fact,  at  least,  the  critic  urges, 
must  be  known  in  its  own  right  as  a  fact  not  now  present; 
and  so  in  this  case  knowledge  is  not  merely  a  process  of  think- 
ing going  on,  but  points  back  to  a  reality  whose  existence 
lies  beyond  the  knowing  experience.  No,  Dewey  replies,  you 
are  confusing  the  content  of  the  judgment  with  the  reference 
of  that  content;  the  content  of  my  idea  about  yesterday's 
rain  certainly  involves  past  time,  but  the  distinctive  or 
characteristic  aim  of  judgment  is  none  the  less  to  give  this 
content  a  future  reference.^  But  there  are  two  forms  of  refer- 
ence in  the  situation,  in  addition  to  the  logical  content  of 
knowledge  for  which  pastness  is  indeed  not  something  in  the 
past,  but  only  an  abstract  and  timeless  essence;  and  to  as- 
sume that  the  practical  reference  to  future  use  is  the  "distinc- 
tive" form,  which  justifies  us  in  ignoring  the  contemplative 
or  cognitive  reference  to  an  actual  past,  is  simply  a  refusal 
to  face  the  particular  difficulty  charged. 

And  now  to  turn  back  to  the  special  point  in  question,  if 
it  may  be  regarded  as  a  possibility  that  an  identical  piece  of 
experience  can  be  reflected  on  in  some  subsequent  thought,  and 
truths  about  it  discovered  that  were  not  realized  when  the 
experience  took  place,  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  its  having  be- 
longed to  the  limited  circle  of  "my"  life,  even  though  it  was 
not  at  the  time  recognized  as  mine.  And  that  this  is  actually 
so  of  the  sort  of  experience  to  which  Dewey's  description  apn 
plies,  seems  at  any  rate  too  natural  an  interpretation  to  be 
simply  brushed  aside.  Nor  does  the  insistence  that  the  ex- 
perience is  always  "social"  alter  the  case  in  the  slightest 
degree.  It  is  true  that  in  my  activities  I  recognize  real  per- 
sons, as  I  recognize  real  things;  they  enter  into  the  experienced 
situation,  and  are  essential  to  its  significance.  But  that  which 
makes  it  describable  as  a  "single"  situation  is  the  way  in  which 
it  grows  out  of  the  activities  of  one  particular  organism.  The 
*  Influence  of  Darwin,  p.  i6i. 


John  Dewey  403 

reactions  of  other  organisms  belong  merely  to  the  cognitive 
content,  psychologically,  of  the  reconstructing  process, — or,  in 
biological  terms,  to  the  environment, — and  do  not  constittae 
the  process  as  a  specific  activity;  this  last  will  always  be 
found  translating  itself  into  an  individual,  and  not  a  composite 
affair. 

9.  The  point  of  the  preceding  criticism  is,  then,  not  that 
Dewey's  account  of  knowledge  is  an  inaccurate  account  of  the 
fact  as  he  defines  it,  but  that  his  definition  rules  out  other 
aspects  that  are  essential  to  any  full  description  of  the  real 
world.  In  the  end  his  sole  justification  for  this  lies  in  the 
arbitrary  selection  of  a  problem,  and  the  will  to  see  things 
only  in  the  light  of  this.  It  may  very  well  be  true  that  ethical 
inquiry  can  be  conducted  without  its  being  necessary  first  to 
become  an  epistemologist ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  no  one 
has  a  right  to  interest  himself  in  a  different  field,  where  episte- 
mology  may  still  be  a  matter  of  legitimate  concern.  Mean- 
while when  we  once  recognize  that  we  are  electing  to  deal 
only  with  the  matter  of  ends,  or  of  ideals,  Dewey's  practical 
contentions  can  be  considered  on  their  own  merits,  as  the  at- 
tempt to  supply  a  method  for  a  naturalistic  conception  of 
progress  which  avoids  the  pitfalls  alike  of  utopianism,  and  of  a 
mechanistic  materialism.  That  ideals  are  not  something  to 
which  to  flee  for  spiritual  refuge,  but  militant  weapons  of  re- 
form; that  they  do  not  preexist  in  a  higher  world,  but  are  con- 
tinuous with  natural  events  whose  possibilities  they  express;  that 
they  are  not  ready-made  standards,  but  the  creation  of  active  in- 
telligence, formed  in  the  process  of  dealing  with  specific  situ- 
ations; that  life  does  not  get  its  value  from  remote  cosmic  rea- 
son, but  evolves  its  own  values;  that  good  is  not  abstract  and 
absolute,  but  plural  and  concrete;  and  that  not  perfection,  but 
the  ever-widening  process  of  perfecting,  constitutes  the  final 
goal, — all  this  is  a  distinctive  point  of  view  which,  whether 
fully  defensible  or  not,  is  at  least  straightforward  and  un- 
ambiguous. 


404       English  and  American  Philosophy 

10.  Nevertheless  even  here  the  metaphysical  denial  of 
epistemology,  and  the  determination  to  remove  from  knowl- 
edge any  conscious  act  of  reference  to  reality  beyond  as  a 
part  of  the  very  meaning  that  experience  carries  within  itself, 
weakens  to  an  extent  the  verisimilitude  of  the  ethical  analy- 
sis. In  reducing  values  to  vdXxning — the  significance  which 
objects  come  to  take  on  for  a  given  situation  in  the  process 
of  finding  its  appropriate  solution, — all  values  become  instru- 
mental values,  or  means  to  an  end  rather  than  the  end  itself. 
Ends,  Dewey  urges,  are  not  values,  nor  do  we  argue  about 
them.  Ends  are  given  to  us,  forced  upon  us  by  the  life 
process;  and  it  is  not  until  some  end  is  already  present,  in 
the  form  of  a  definite  problem  clamoring  to  be  solved,  that 
valuing,  and  with  it  values,  comes  into  existence.  Take  for 
example  the  illustration  of  purchasing  a  suit  of  clothes.  The 
various  aspects  of  price,  style,  quality  and  the  like,  which  enter 
into  my  choice,  represent  no  standardized  values;  the  weight 
to  be  assigned  to  each  emerges  as  the  process  of  valuation 
proceeds.  Meanwhile  the  suit-buying  itself  is  presupposed 
before  a  problem  can  arise;  and  if  we  ask  why  the  end  is 
chosen,  the  only  answer  is.  Because  we  cannot  help  it,  be- 
cause the  state  of  affairs  demands  it.^ 

Nevertheless  the  verbal  situation  here  is  not  altogether  a 
comfortable  one.  It  does  strike  us  as  a  little  strange  to  say 
that  we  never  deliberate  about  ends,  but  only  about  means; 
at  least  we  make  a  natural  distinction  between  elements  which 
enter  into  and  make  up  the  satisfying  nature  of  what  we  want, 
and  those  which  are  merely  a  means  to  its  attainment,  as 
signing  a  check  is  the  means  to  the  securing  of  our  suit  of 
clothes.  And  the  difficulty  seems  to  go  back,  again,  to  the 
refusal  to  recognize  that  knowledge  is  anything  more  than 
problem-solving,  or  that  we  can  be  said  to  know  in  the  sense 
of  a  reflective  or  contemplative  reference  to  an  object.  The 
difficulty  may  take  either  of  two  forms.  If  we  accept  literally 
*  Essays  in  Experimental  Logic,  Ch.  14. 


John  Dewey  405 

the  biological  side  of  Dewey's  teaching,  the  whole  conception 
of  value,  to  begin  with,  except  in  the  sense  in  which  the 
wheels  and  cogs  of  a  machine  have  value,  seems  to  slip  from 
our  grasp.  On  strictly  behavioristic  terms,  the  end  to  which 
the  valuation  process  looks  is  simply  the  physical  adjustment 
of  forward-moving  action.  Whether  Dewey  himself  recognizes 
more  than  this,  is  not  easy  to  determine  with  certainty  from 
his  language.  He  does  indeed  allow  that  as  a  factor  in  ac- 
tivity— as  distinct  from  "knowing," — a  thing  has  value  in  the 
sense  that  we  love  it,  prize  it,  cling  to  it;  but  do  the  former 
terms  here  mean  anything  in  addition  to  the  last  one?  In 
so  far  as  experience  is  interpreted  as  biological  activity, — and 
at  some  point  in  his  descriptions  of  the  fact,  there  is  always 
a  form  of  expression  to  suggest  this, — ^prizing  can  be  nothing 
more  than  "acting  to  perpetuate  the  object's  presence."  And 
so  far  no  value  is  provided  for  in  terms  of  what  we  call  a 
sense  of  value.  It  is  only  an  atavistic  return  to  subjective 
categories  which  prevents  us  from  recognizing  that  "satisfac- 
tion" has  in  such  a  case  no  more  meaning  for  an  organism 
than  for  a  printing  press.  Satisfaction  in  the  proper  sense 
is  a  kind  of  inner  experience  not  open  to  the  scientific  observer; 
it  is  suffused  with  feeling  and  not  a  mere  form  of  movement, 
a  state  of  felt  enjoyment  in  acting  and  not  a  bare  physical 
act. 

Now  this  is  the  sort  of  end  that  we  naturally  say  has  "in- 
trinsic" value — an  end  which  is  appealing  in  itself,  and  not 
simply  useful  as  a  means.  And  having  enjoyed  such  satisfying 
experiences,  we  surely  seem  to  be  able  to  hold  them  contem- 
platively before  the  mind,  and  recognize  their  quality  of  de- 
sirableness, or  their  "value."  There  is  no  need  to  retract  the 
concession  that  in  the  concrete,  the  value  which  constitutes  a 
specific  human  aim  is  created  in  the  process  of  evaluing;  past 
values  are  instrumental  in  a  sense,  in  that  in  contributing  to 
the  new  act  they  may  need  to  be  revalued.  Nevertheless  they 
are  instruments  of  a  special  sort;  and  unless  we  could  thus 


4o6        English  and  American  Philosophy 

envisage  ends  as  desirable  and  valuable  in  themselves,  we 
should  be  badly  handicapped  in  settling  on  a  new  course  of 
action.  When  we  consult  a  physician  it  is  true  that,  in  terms 
of  the  immediate  problem  before  us,  the  restoration  of  health, 
not  health  itself,  is  the  end  we  seek.  But  unless  health  inde- 
pendently were  recognized  by  us  as  a  good,  why  should  we 
want  to  restore  it? — there  is  no  purely  biological  force  that 
drives  sick  men  to  a  doctor.  We  act,  Dewey  has  told  us,  not 
because  the  end  has  value,  but  because  we  have  to  act,  because 
life  is  bound  to  go  on.  Now,  irrespective  of  the  fact  that  there 
might  be  occasions  when  the  process  of  evaluation  would  call 
for  death  rather  than  for  further  living,  the  objection  that  will 
naturally  be  felt  to  this  is,  that  it  appears  to  make  life  auto- 
matic, and  our  ends  the  outcome  of  the  situation  wholly,  rather 
than  of  a  reflective  sense  of  what  kind  of  activity  is  for  us 
worth  while.  But  our  choice  is  not  limited  to  the  assigning  of 
value  to  elements  within  a  special  and  fated  kind  of  act.  Life 
indeed  forces  on  us  the  need  that  we  do  something,  since  re- 
fraining from  action,  even,  is  an  act;  but  this  is  far  too  vague 
and  indeterminate  to  mean  anything  in  terms  of  concrete  prob- 
lems. Between  any  particular  kind  of  end  and  others,  we 
always  have  a  choice;  and  to  make  this  choice,  we  find  our- 
selves perforce  adopting  the  contemplative  attitude  of  en- 
visaging tentative  ends  or  values — values  in  the  large,  em- 
bodied in  terms  of  specific  past  experiences  of  satisfaction, — 
which  is  presupposed  by,  rather  than  reducible  to,  the  activity 
of  fresh  evaluing,  and  which  is  entirely  comparable  with  that 
transcendent  reference  in  other  and  less  directly  practical  judg- 
ments which  Dewey's  whole  theory  ignores. 

§  4.    Other  Pragmatists.    Pearson.    Baldmn 

I.  In  view  of  its  short  period  of  existence,  the  literature  of 
pragmatism,  most  of  it  highly  controversial,  has  been  volu- 
minous, e^ecially  in  the  pages  of  the  various  philosophical 


Other  Pragmatists  407 

journals.  Among  the  pragmatists  A.  W.  Moore, — ^whose  Prag- 
tnatism  and  Its  Critics  is  the  clearest  popular  exposition  of 
the  creed, — H.  Heath  Bawden,  and,  in  the  field  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  religion,  E.  S.  Ames,  are  representatives  of  the  so- 
called  Chicago  School,  which  owes  its  existence  to  Dewey's 
teaching;  John  Russell  and  H.  M.  Kallen  are  influenced  more 
directly  by  James;  while  Schiller  finds  a  disciple  in  D.  A.  Mur- 
ray. Russell,  originally  a  vigorous  critic  of  pragmatism,  is 
notable  as  affording  proof  that  philosophers  are  occasionally 
open  to  conviction  by  argument.  An  early  manifesto  of  the 
Chicago  group  is  the  volume  of  Studies  in  Logical  Theory  by 
Dewey  and  a  number  of  his  pupils,  published  in  1906;  while 
more  recently  another  cooperative  book  called  Creative  Intelli- 
gence has  appeared,  to  which  nine  philosophers  contribute. 
Coinciding  in  a  general  way  with  the  pragmatic  tendency  in 
some  of  its  larger  features,  is  the  reproduction  of  Bergson's 
philosophy  in  a  literature,  largely  expository  however,  which 
has  already  attained  considerable  proportions;  H.  Wildon  Carr's 
is  the  most  prominent  name  in  this  connection.  A  pragmatic 
motive  is  also  apparent  in  certain  individual  thinkers  who  do 
not  so  readily  submit  to  classification.  Henry  Sturt  has  al- 
ready been  mentioned  in  connection  with  personal  idealism. 
In  Edward  D.  Fawcett,  the  romantic  impulse  conspicuous  in 
James  and  Schiller  is  still  more  pronounced.  Fawcett  con- 
ceives of  nature  as  the  product  of  an  ever-changing  cosmic 
Imagination,  a  game  which  the  Imagination  plays  with  itself. 
He  has  in  common  with  pragmatism  its  acceptance  of  the 
reality  of  change  and  time,  of  novelty  and  spontaneity  un- 
checked by  fixed  or  preordained  directions  of  creation,  and  of 
the  subordinate  place  of  the  conceptual  framework  of  science 
— a  secondary  product  that  has  no  reality  outside  its  human 
creators'  heads,  and  that  serves  merely  as  a  practical  tool — 
in  comparison  with  the  rich  and  unstinted  variety  of  the  im- 
aginal  world,  with  its  concrete  and  vivid  sensuous  qualities. 
2.    It  is  here  also  that  one  may  most  naturally  refer  to 


4o8        English  and  American  Philosophy 

two  other  contemporaneous  writers,  one  primarily  a  naturalist, 
and  the  other  a  psychologist.  Karl  Pearson  is  the  most 
thoroughgoing  English  representative  of  the  ideal  of  scientific 
method  which  is  taken  over  by  most  of  the  pragmatists,  and 
which  looks  upon  scientific  concepts  as  a  logical  shorthand  for 
summarizing  and  ordering  the  facts  of  immediate  sensational 
experience.  In  the  very  statement  of  his  thesis,  however,  Pear- 
son adds  a  supplementary  claim  which  complicates  it.  These 
concepts,  it  appears,  are  not  mere  intellectual  formulae,  but 
play  an  active  part  in  life  as  well ;  they  intervene  in  the  evolu- 
tionary process,  and  help  us  to  fit  conduct  to  sense  impressions 
more  skilfully  and  quickly.  But  in  thus  locating  science  itself 
in  a  larger  situation,  and  taking  thought  as  a  means  of  or- 
ganic adjustment  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  we  have  passed 
beyond  a  mere  description  of  sensations  to  an  attempt  at  causal 
explanation,  which  rests  upon  that  very  notion  of  a  world  of 
reality,  outside  the  flux  of  feeling,  of  which  Pearson's  sensa- 
tionalism supposes  itself  to  have  gotten  rid.  It  is  true  a  way 
is  found  of  withdrawing  the  concession;  but  it  is  at  the  cost 
of  increasing  the  improbabilities  involved.  To  escape  attribut- 
ing the  laws  which  resume  the  routine  of  phenomena  to  any- 
thing beyond  the  conscious  content  itself,  the  suggestion  is 
made  that  this  routine  may  perhaps  be  due,  not  to  the  en- 
vironment, but  to  the  organized  conscious  subject,  which 
creates  order  by  its  selective  activity  in  picking  out  data  from 
what  is  in  itself  a  universal  chaos.^  But  the  whole  concep- 
tion of  survival  loses  its  point  if  there  is  no  determinate  reality 
to  which  we  need  to  adjust  ourselves,  corresponding  to  the 
routine  which  science  formulates.  Doubtless  the  particular 
form  of  description  is  a  human  achievement.  But  if  the  achieve- 
ment is  to  get  us  anywhere,  it  must  have  an  explanatory  value 
also  with  reference  to  a  world  on  whose  sequences  man's  sur- 
vival depends;  evolution  and  natural  selection,  at  the  least, 
are  natural  causes  which  are  required  to  lend  to  conceptual 
^Grammar  of  Science,  Ch.  3,  Sec.  12. 


Karl  Pearson  409 

shorthand  a  practical  utility,  and  not  mere  conceptual  short- 
hand themselves. 

The  same  resort  to  what  his  principles  leave  meaningless  is 
apparent  in  Pearson's  whole  treatment  of  the  physical  world 
as  a  complex  of  sensations.  This  everywhere  presupposes  a 
real  nervous  system,  picking  up  messages  from  a  surrounding 
reservoir  of  forces  realistically  conceived,  however  mysterious 
they  may  be  in  their  nature.  Pearson's  favorite  metaphor  is 
that  of  a  great  telephone  exchange,  which  is  present  to  the 
operator  only  in  terms  of  the  sounds  that  occur  at  his  re- 
ceiving instrument.  But  if  the  entire  world  of  the  operator 
is  limited  to  these  sounds,  the  exchange — which  gives  all  its 
point  to  the  illustration — is  at  once  dissipated  into  thin  air; 
the  explanation  presupposes  that  we  know  a  reach  of  fact  of 
which  its  outcome  is  to  show  that  nothing  can  possibly  be 
known,  not  even  so  much  as  to  give  us  ground  for  imagining 
it  to  exist.  The  lack  of  rigor  in  Pearson's  logic  may  be  il- 
lustrated by  his  suggestion  that  we  gain  the  right  to  abandon 
solipsism,  and  to  accept  the  existence  of  other  and  independent 
selves,  through  recognizing  the  chance  that  science  may  con- 
ceivably some  day,  by  arranging  proper  (physical)  connec- 
tions between  my  (physical)  brain  and  that  of  my  neighbor, 
bring  his  sensations  actually  within  the  circle  of  my  experience.^ 

3.  In  James  Mark  Baldwin,  many  of  the  more  strictly 
psychological  features  of  pragmatism — its  emphasis  on  the 
genetic  method,  on  the  active  and  selective  character  of  human 
thinking,  on  the  instrumental  relationship  of  thought  to  wider 
human  ends — are  defended  in  much  the  fashion  of  James 
and  Schiller.  But  Baldwin  stops  short  of  a  pragmatic  meta- 
physics, and  accepts  expressly  the  control  of  thought  by  reality 
which  it  has  to  recognize  if  it  is  to  think  truly.  Accordingly 
a  place  is  left  for  neutral  and  objective  truth,  as  a  system  of 
commonly  observable  relationships  freed  from  direct  depend- 
ence on  a  preferential  human  interest  and  interpretation,  even 
^Ibid.,  Ch.  II,  Sec.  S- 


4IO       English  and  American  Philosophy 

though  it  be  true  that  knowledge  grows  originally  out  of  special 
interests,  and  that  the  knowledge  system  has  its  justification 
in  the  further  ends  which  it  may  be  made  to  serve.  Baldwin's 
own  metaphysics,  for  which  he  invents  the  title  of  Pancalism, 
finds  in  the  aesthetic  experience  the  clue  to  the  true  nature  of 
reality.  All  other  interpretative  concepts  fail,  in  that  they 
lend  themselves  to  dualisms  which  they  cannot  overcome.  Thus 
knowledge  and  teleological  value,  the  true  and  the  good,  can 
never  be  translated  fully  into  terms  one  of  the  other.  Even 
the  religious  conception  fails  to  achieve  unity;  as  ideal,  God 
is  a  postulate  beyond  the  grasp  of  intellectual  apprehension, 
while  in  so  far  as  he  is  actual  he  is  not  ideal,  but  remains  a 
finite  person  along  with  other  persons.  It  is  only  in  achiev- 
ing and  enjoying  the  beautiful  that  we  fully  realize  the  real, 
and  are  released  from  the  bondage  of  urgent  and  divided 
motives;  in  beauty,  the  dualisms  of  the  mental  life — of  theo- 
retical and  practical,  mind  and  body,  inner  and  outer,  freedom 
and  necessity,  the  actual  and  the  ideal — merge  in  an  immedi- 
ate contemplative  value  of  real  presence.  Feeling,  rather  than 
reason  or  will,  is  thus  the  ultimate  organ  of  reality. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
NEO-REALISM 

§  I.    English  Neo-Realism.    G.  E.  Moore 

I.  The  realism  of  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  and 
the  opening  of  the  twentieth  century  was  on  the  whole  too 
sporadic,  and  too  little  marked  by  sensational  features,  to  at- 
tract any  very  large  amount  of  attention  either  from  the  domi- 
nant idealism,  or  from  its  younger  rival  pragmatism.  In  more 
recent  years,  however,  realism  has  suddenly  developed  into  an 
aggressive  school,  characterized  by  an  intense  class  conscious- 
ness, and  a  lively  faith  in  its  own  destiny.  Traces  at  least  of 
all  of  its  distinctive  doctrines  can  be  found  in  the  past;  but 
these  doctrines  are  given  an  explicit  logical  setting  which 
justifies  its  claim  to  rank  as  a  genuine  philosophical  novelty. 
Here  also  the  task  of  evaluating  the  movement  is  compli- 
cated, however,  as  in  the  case  of  pragmatism,  by  the  fact  that 
it  combines  several  motives  whose  relation  to  one  another  is 
not  at  once  obvious ;  and  indeed  in  the  end  it  is  open  to  ques- 
tion whether  we  have  to  do  with  a  single  tendency,  or  with 
several  rival  ones. 

Neo-realism  and  pragmatism  meet  on  common  ground  in 
their  hostility  to  two  foes — absolutism  on  the  one  hand,  and 
representative  dualism  on  the  other.  To  both  of  these  neo- 
realism  opposes  the  thesis,  that  we  have  an  immediate  knowl- 
edge of  reality  that  is  non-mental  in  its  nature;  though  such 
a  doctrine  bears  a  different  emphasis  according  to  the  con- 
text.    As  against  idealism,  it  insists  that  things  are  not  in 

411 


412        English  and  American  Philosophy 

any  sense  dependent  upon  consciousness  for  their  existence  or 
their  nature,  but  pass  in  and  out  of  the  knowledge  relation- 
ship unchanged.  As  against  dualism,  it  denies  the  interposition 
of  any  sensation,  or  idea,  or  mental  state,  to  mediate  our  ac- 
quaintance with  the  independent  fact,  and  maintains  that  the 
object  is  present  in  knowledge  identically  and  in  person.  This 
theory  of  sense  perception  takes  indeed  two  very  different 
forms.  In  the  one  of  them  it  still  leaves  the  "mental"  standing 
over  against  the  physical,  but  reduces  the  mental  from  a  "state 
of  consciousness"  to  a  mental  act;  in  its  more  radical  develop- 
ment, consciousness  and  mind  are  eliminated  altogether  as  en- 
tities, and  become  merely  relationships  of  a  special  sort  into 
which  physical  objects  may  enter  among  themselves.  But  on 
the  fundamental  issue  neo-realists  are  all  agreed. 

2.  To  justify  this  conception  of  the  independence  of  the 
object  of  knowledge  and  its  consequent  non-mental  character, 
various  considerations  are  adduced;  but  there  is  one  in  par- 
ticular which  is  of  special  significance,  and  which  brings  us 
into  contact  with  the  second  important  aspect  of  neo-realistic 
doctrine — the  logical  one.  This  argument  rests  upon  the  so- 
called  "externality  of  relations."  If,  as  the  neo-realist  contends 
in  opposition  to  the  idealist,  terms  may  stand  in  relation  without 
being  modified  by  the  relationship,  it  is  open  to  suppose  that  of 
the  knowledge  relation  this  also  is  the  case;  and  we  are  ac- 
cordingly in  a  position  to  allow  full  weight  to  the  empirical 
evidence  in  favor  of  such  an  epistemological  realism.  Mean- 
while apart  also  from  this  special  consequence  for  the  knowl- 
edge problem,  the  theory  of  external  relations  has  other  and 
more  general  bearings  on  the  metaphysics  of  neo-realism.  Thus 
it  gives,  as  against  the  idealistic  standard  of  a  single  organized 
system,  the  possibility  that  the  elements  of  reality  may  be 
known  truly  by  themselves,  and  so  vindicates  analysis  as  the 
true  philosophical  method,  in  opposition  to  the  belief  among 
idealists  that,  in  breaking  up  relational  complexes,  analysis 
alters  also  the  character  of  their  components.    Still  more  sig- 


Neo-Realism  413 

nificant  is  a  further  ontological  conclusion.  If  relations  axe 
as  genuinely  real  as  the  things  which  they  relate,  if  they  are 
not  additions  of  the  thinking  mind,  but  are  discovered  by 
the  mind  as  truly  as  sense  data  are  discovered,  it  is  necessary 
to  find  in  the  non-mental  world  a  place  for  entities  not  in  any 
obvious  sense  physical.  The  outcome  is  a  revival  of  Platonic 
realism.  Since  universals  are  there  to  be  discovered,  and  have 
reality  independently  of  being  known,  there  must  be  a  realm 
of  being  to  which  they  eternally  belong;  and  if  we  apply  the 
term  existence  to  entities  that  are  located  at  some  particular 
time  or  place,  we  may  call  this  realm  the  realm  of  subsistence, 
and  say,  with  Plato,  that  apart  from  the  world  revealed  through 
the  senses,  there  is  another  and  subsisting  world  laid  up  in  the 
heavens,  and  inhabited  by  such  things  as  logical  principles, 
ethical  ideals,  mathematical  relations,  Beauty,  and  Truth,  and 
all  the  eternal  verities. 

3.  The  starting  point  of  English  neo-realism  is  probably  to 
be  looked  for  in  two  articles  by  George  E.  Moore  which  ap- 
peared in  the  philosophical  journal  Mind  about  the  opening 
of  the  new  century,  one  of  them  dealing  with  the  psychological 
theory  of  perception,  while  the  other  involves  the  logical  motive 
that  constitutes  the  second  main  direction  of  the  neo-realistic 
interest.  Here  both  the  theses  receive  a  concise  expression 
that  makes  them  relatively  more  easy  to  examine;  and  it  will 
accordingly  be  convenient  to  take  them  as  the  text  for  certain 
general  comments  that  are  intended  to  apply  to  tjieir  appear- 
ance in  other  contexts  also. 

Moore's  published  volumes  belong  to  the  field  of  ethics, 
where  his  neo-realism  takes  the  form  of  a  contention  that 
"goodness"  is  an  ultimate  and  objectively  subsisting  entity 
which  cannot  be  further  analyzed,  but  can  only  be  perceived. 
This  same  contention  is  applied  to  "truth"  in  the  earlier  of 
the  two  articles  referred  to;  ^  truth,  like  goodness,  is  an  ob- 
jective character,  also  unanalyzable,  which  belongs  to  certain 
*  The  Nature  of  Judgment,  Mind,  N.  S.  Vol.  8,  p.  176. 


414       English  and  American  Philosophy 

judgments.  Such  a  conclusion  is  the  natural,  if  not  the  neces- 
sary consequence  of  the  peculiar  neo-realistic  attitude  toward 
knowledge.  When  the  idealistic  doctrine  that  truth  is  only  de- 
finable in  terms  of  a  comprehensive  unity  of  logical  system  is 
repudiated,  and  the  truth  character  is  attached  to  single  pro- 
positions, two  main  possibilities  present  themselves.  If  the 
abstract  thought  content  involved  in  knowledge  is  distin- 
guished from  the  object  of  knowledge,  then  it  is  open  to  define 
truth  as  a  relation  in  which  our  thought  stands  to  the  object 
which  it  knows;  but  in  case  such  a  dualism  also  be  rejected, 
and  knowledge  described  as  immediate  presence  to  awareness 
or  intuition,  there  is  no  obvious  meaning  to  its  claim  to  "truth," 
if  not  in  terms  of  some  internal  property  directly  open  to 
inspection. 

Moore  attempts  to  show  that  such  an  issue  is  as  a  matter 
of  fact  logically  presupposed  in  every  possible  proof  or  test 
of  truth,  and  that  this  necessarily  leads  to  a  view  of  reality  as 
conceptual  in  its  nature.  What  in  a  judgment  I  mean  to  assert 
is  nothing  about  my  mental  states,  but  always  a  specific  con- 
nection of  concepts,  recognized  as  objectively  valid,  and  not  as 
mere  ideas  in  my  mind.  Accordingly  if  truth  and  falsehood 
have  their  sole  meaning  as  applied  to  a  relation  between  con- 
cepts, it  is  impossible  to  subordinate  concepts  to  existents, 
as  if  these  last  were  something  more  ultimate,  and  supplied  a 
standard  by  which  the  truth  of  conceptual  knowledge  is  to 
be  determined.  Truth  cannot  depend  on  a  relation  to  exist- 
ents, since  the  proposition  by  which  it  is  so  defined  must  itself 
be  true;  and  the  truth  of  this  cannot  be  established,  without 
a  vicious  circle,  by  exhibiting  its  dependence  on  an  existent. 
An  appeal  to  the  "facts"  is  useless;  for  in  order  that  a  fact 
may  be  made  the  basis  of  an  argument,  it  must  be  put  in  the 
form  of  a  proposition,  and  this  proposition  already  must  be 
supposed  true.  It  seems  necessary,  then,  to  hold  that  the 
fundamental  basis  of  reality  is  the  logical  concept;  existence 
itself  is  nothing  but  a  special  concept,  and  the  existential  judg- 


G.  E.  Moore  415 

ment,  "man  exists,"  means  only  that  the  concept  man  and  the 
concept  existence  stand  in  a  specific  relation.  All  that  exists 
is  thus  composed  of  concepts  necessarily  related  to  one  another 
in  definite  ways,  and  likewise  to  the  concept  of  existence;  and 
a  concept  cannot  itself  be  described  either  as  an  existent  or  as 
part  of  one,  since  in  the  conception  of  an  existent  it  is  already 
presupposed.  So  if  a  judgment  is  false,  this  is  not  because 
my  ideas  do  not  correspond  to  reality,  but  because  such  a  con- 
junction of  concepts  is  not  to  be  found  among  existents.  And 
the  peculiar  kind  of  conjunction  which  constitutes  a  proposition 
true  cannot  be  further  defined,  but  must  be  immediately  recog- 
nized. 

In  one  form  or  another,  the  general  point  of  view  here  sug- 
gested reappears  constantly  in  neo-realistic  metaphysics.  In 
its  final  nature  reality  is  logical  essence — an  affair  of  terms 
and  propositions.  It  is  significant  that  the  same  result  has  been 
found  emerging  in  the  rival  philosophy  of  idealism.  Neo- 
realism,  to  be  sure,  is  for  the  most  part  pluralistic  rather  than 
monistic.  It  denies  that  we  have  any  reason  to  suppose  that 
these  logical  entities  are  necessarily  grouped  together  in  a 
single  organic  system;  and  in  any  case  it  asserts  emphatically 
the  self-subsistence  of  the  logical  fact,  as  against  the  demand  for 
an  underlying  principle,  or  source,  or  universal  self-conscious- 
ness, to  bring  unity  about.  But  in  both  alike  logic  tends  to 
become  more  ultimate  than  existence.  And  in  both  cases  the 
difficulty  of  meeting  the  contention  is  the  same;  since  we 
cannot  think  of  anything  whatever  except  in  terms  of  concepts, 
or  of  universals,  if  we  once  allow  ourselves  to  be  tied  down 
to  a  world  of  description,  no  logic  can  compel  us  to  go  beyond 
its  boundaries.  Philosophers,  who  are  mainly  interested  in 
ideas,  have  always  been  under  a  strong  temptation  thus  to 
force  reality  into  a  conceptual  mold. 

4.  The  first  thing  to  be  said  about  this  is,  as  before,  that 
it  clearly  does  not  satisfy  our  normal  sense  of  what  "reality" 
means.    Whatever  existence  in  itself  may  be,  it  assuredly  is 


41 6       English  and  American  Philosophy 

something  more  than  the  concept  of  existence,  whether  this 
be  regarded  as  a  single  logical  entity,  or  as  a  complex  of  more 
ultimate  entities.  Meanwhile  it  is  true,  however,  that  the  situ- 
ation is  not  at  all  a  simple  one;  and  there  are  aspects  of  it 
which  may  seem  to  give  backing  to  the  neo-realistic  claim 
even  in  the  eyes  of  common  sense.  This  is  most  evident  when 
we  try  to  make  clear  to  ourselves  the  nature  of  relations.  We 
should  unquestionably  be  inclined  to  admit  that  relations  are 
in  some  sense  real.  When  I  perceive  the  difference  of  red 
and  blue,  I  do  not  naturally  suppose  that  my  mind  has  added 
something  to  the  colors  in  comparing  them;  they  actually  are 
different,  and  would  still  have  been  so  had  the  difference  never 
been  noted.  At  the  same  time,  we  find  it  a  little  hard  to  give 
the  relation  quite  the  same  standing  that  physical  facts  possess. 
Relations,  accordingly,  appear  to  have  a  peculiar  status,  which 
readily  suggests  the  notion  of  a  Platonic  subsistence. 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  common  sense  would  probably 
refuse  to  go  further,  and  attribute  to  subsistence  a  superior, 
or  even  a  strictly  independent  status.  We  should  ordinarily  not 
be  ready  to  assign  being  of  any  sort  to  "difference,"  were  there 
not  things  already  in  existence  io  be  different.  Granting  exist- 
ences, there  is  a  strong  compulsion  to  believe  that  a  great 
variety  of  relationships  really  hold  between  them,  or,  as  we 
may  put  it,  subsist;  but  apart  from  these  realities  that  them- 
selves are  more  than  subsistents,  the  relationships  simply 
would  not  be  at  all.  It  might  be  replied  to  this  that  while, 
indeed,  terms  must  be  supposed  before  we  can  have  relations, 
these  terms  may  themselves  be  universal  terms,  and  so  have 
no  need  to  be  thought  of  as  existing.  But  this  at  least  gives 
to  the  term  subsistence  an  extension  which  diminishes  very 
sensibly  the  initial  persuasiveness  of  its  metaphysical  claims. 
While  we  do  have  a  strong  natural  conviction  of  the  reality, 
or  subsistence,  of  relations  between  the  elements  of  the  actu- 
ally existing  world, — including  real  ideas  and  real  acts, — we 
cannot  appeal  to  such  a  conviction  in  favor  of  the  independent 


G.  E.  Moore  417 

being  of  concepts  or  universals — of  whiteness  that  is  not  any 
white  in  particular,  and  of  man  apart  from  individual  men. 
On  the  contrary,  most  people  would  feel  great  difficulty,  nort: 
merely  in  believing  in,  but  in  attaching  any  definite  meaning  to 
the  notion  that  whiteness  has  being  of  any  sort  when  taken 
apart  both  from  existing  white  things,  and  from  existing  ideas 
in  the  minds  of  human  beings;  especially  since,  by  bringing 
in  "ideas,"  we  seem  able  to  give  a  sense  to  all  that  legitimately 
can  be  said  about  the  "subsistence"  of  whiteness.  For  if  we  as- 
sume, as  we  have  an  apparent  right  to  do,  that  by  thinking, 
and  the  use  of  ideas,  we  are  able  to  refer  to  characteristics 
attaching  to  the  actually  existing  world,  to  hold  their  abstract 
essence  before  the  mind,  and,  by  analysis  and  comparison  of 
their  content,  to  detect  the  same  relationships  that  they  contri- 
bute to  the  existences  in  which  they  are  embodied,  we  should 
still  be  in  a  position  to  talk  of  conceptual  facts  as  actual 
characters  of  the  world,  and  not  as  merely  subjective  or  mental, 
without  being  called  upon  to  assign  them  to  a  mysterious  realm 
of  their  own,  and  then  having  to  meet  the  further  problem  of 
bringing  such  a  realm  into  connection  with  particular  facts 
of  existence  and  of  cognition.  For  on  this  showing  concepts 
are  always  attached  to  something  that  exists, — in  their  origin, 
to  the  cases  of  existence  from  which  they  are  collected,  and  in 
their  abstract  conceptual  form,  to  knowing  processes  which  also 
are  existing  facts,  and  to  whose  generalizing  agency  that  logical 
function  is  due  which  renders  concepts  possible  sources  of 
inference. 

5.  And  now  this  alternative  also  suggests  an  answer  to 
Moore's  logical  argument.  What  alone  this  seems  to  show  is 
that  we  cannot  demonstrate  the  truth  of  anything  without  pre- 
supposing true  propositions;  but  that  is  not  to  define  truth.  And 
as  a  matter  of  fact  the  truth  of  a  proposition,  it  may  be  claimed, 
does  not  really  lie  where  Moore  finds  it.  Propositions,  to  begin 
with,  do  not  themselves  subsist,  though  the  relations  which 
are  set  forth  by  them  do ;  a  proposition  as  a  proposition,  if  we 


41 8       English  and  American  Philosophy 

follow  the  natural  view,  is  simply  a  way  in  which  a  relational 
complex  is  translated  into  ideas,  or  terms  of  mind.  And  mean- 
while this  relation  which  a  proposition  formulates  is  as  such 
not  true;  it  simply  is.  There  is  no  more  reason  for  calling 
the  relation  of  equality  between  x  and  y  true,  than  for  calling 
the  existence  of  a  table  true;  both  are  facts  simply,  which 
become  "truths"  only  as  they  are  referred  to  by  a  mental  belief 
that  takes  the  form  of  a  proposition.  What  in  strictness  the 
truth  claim  here  involves  is,  that  the  proposition,  as  a  mental 
apprehension,  correctly  corresponds  to  the  relationship  per- 
ceived; just  as  a  qualitative  character  is  "truthful,"  not  as  it 
exists  in  the  thing  it  qualifies,  but  as  its  presence  in  a  knowl- 
edge content  is  an  accurate  transcript  of  its  non-cognitive 
status.  Grant  that  truth  is  only  the  perception  of  a  logical 
relationship,  and  it  does  apparently  follow  that  knowledge  is 
reducible  to  propositions  illuminated  internally  by  their  own 
self-evidence;  but  on  the  assumption  that  what  is  thus  re- 
vealed is  a  relation,  not  a  truth,  and  that  belief,  whether  true 
or  false,  involves,  in  addition  to  any  possible  apprehension  of 
content,  a  reference  to  reality  such  as  carries  us  beyond  logic, 
and  the  reason  for  subordinating  existence  to  concepts  disap- 
pears. Moore's  whole  argument  implies,  again,  that  we  have 
already  defined  truth  in  such  a  way  that  the  object  of  belief  is 
identical  with  the  logical  terms  through  which  it  is  described; 
and  this  is  not  a  compulsory  assumption. 

6.  Meanwhile  even  apart  from  the  soundness  of  this  criti- 
cism, there  is  one  problem  or  set  of  problems  in  particular 
confronting  the  neo-realist,  on  which  no  agreement  seems  to 
have  been  reached.  This  has  to  do  with  the  connection  in 
which  the  "data"  which  for  neo-realism  are  the  immediate  ob- 
jects of  knowledge  stand  to  the  physical  things  with  which 
science  deals,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  with  the  relation,  among 
these  data  themselves,  of  the  logical  knowledge  of  universals 
to  the  particular  data  of  sense.  And  this  lends  a  considerable 
degree  of  uncertainty  to  the  doctrine  of  sense  data  also,  which 


G.  E.  Moore  419 

constitutes  perhaps  the  leading  motive  in  the  development  of  the 
movement  in  England,  and  which  gets  expression  in  Moore's 
other  article  in  Mind}  If  however  we  are  satisfied  not  to  press 
these  further  questions,  up  to  a  point  the  neo-realistic  theory 
of  sense  perception  is  simple,  and  extremely  ingenious;  and 
if  it  is  true,  it  is  of  a  character  to  short-circuit  a  large  number 
of  the  controversies  most  familiar  in  the  philosophy  of  the  past. 
English  empiricism,  to  take  a  typical  example,  had  been  wont 
to  assume,  as  indeed  self-evident,  that  that  with  which  we 
come  into  immediate  contact  in  our  lives  is  sensation,  or  feel- 
ing— a  psychical  or  mental  stuff;  the  "object,"  accordingly, 
if  there  be  such  a  thing  at  all,  is  not  given  directly,  but  can 
only  be  inferred.  This  assumption  Moore  thinks  is  due  to 
overlooking  a  distinction  which,  once  recognized,  throws  a  new 
light  on  the  entire  situation.  What  is  the  so-called  psychical 
fact,  or  sensation? — as  psychical,  it  is  not  mere  redness,  but 
awareness  of  red.  There  are,  that  is,  two  things  involved  in 
close  relationship — the«sense  datum,  and  the  awareness.  But 
with  this  distinction  noted,  it  becomes  at  once  a  question  what 
right  we  have  to  talk  about  the  redness  itself  as  subjective. 
The  "awareness"  is  indeed  subjective;  but  the  awareness  is 
not  red.  It  is  not  as  a  red  awareness,  but  as  an  awareness  of 
red,  that  a  sensation  is  describable; 'sensation,  in  other  words, 
is  a  compound  of  two  facts,  and  in  the  second  fact,  or  the 
"redness,'^  we  already  are  in  contact  with  something  just  as 
objective  as  chairs  or  tables.  We  do  not  have,  accordingly, 
to  find  a  way  of  getting  outside  the  mind  from  the  subjective 
starting  point  of  sensation ;  in  sensation,  we  are  already  beyond 
the  subjective. 

Around  this  fundamental  thesis  that  the  mental  is  not  a 
stuff,  sensational  or  otherwise,  but  a  diaphanous  act  which  pro- 
ceeds directly  to  an  objective  content,  a  considerable  literature 
has  grown  up  during  the  last  few  years,  which  undertakes  to 
reconstruct  the  philosophic  situation  in  a  way  to  correct  ideal- 
*  The  Refutation  of  Idealism,  Mind,  N.  S.,  Vol.  12,  p.  433. 


420        English  and  American  Philosophy 

ism,  while  avoiding  also  the  difficulties  attendant  on  a  dualism 
between  ideas  and  things.  The  position  has  certain  apparent 
advantages  which  account  for  the  warm  welcome  it  has  re- 
ceived, and  which  make  it  obviously  worth  while  to  try  it  out 
as  a  serious  hypothesis;  Moore^s  attempt  to  lend  it  logical 
necessity,  however,  fails  to  be  entirely  convincing.  In  deny- 
ing that  color,  for  example,  is  the  content  or  quality  of  a  sen- 
sation, and  that  there  is  any  such  verifiable  entity  as  a  "blue 
awareness,"  advantage  is  taken  of  an  ambiguity  in  the  latter 
word  to  which  attention  has  had  already  to  be  called  in  previ- 
ous connections.  It  of  course  will  have  to  be  allowed  that  if 
w^e  mean  by  awareness  an  act  of  knowing,  a  blue  "act"  comes 
near  to  being  an  absurdity.  Nevertheless  the  English  mind,  at 
any  rate,  has  never  been  conscious  of  any  particular  difficulty 
in  talking  about  a  blue  "feeling,"  where  the  blueness  is  in- 
tended actually  to  characterize  the  nature  of  the  felt  fact,  just 
as  painfulness  characterizes  the  nature  of  another  felt  fact  of 
a  comparable  sort.  In  other  words,  "consciousness,"  implicitly 
if  not  always  with  entire  clearness,  has  been  distinguished  from 
"knowing,"  as  an  existence  from  an  act — an  existence  consti- 
tuted just  by  the  indefinable  fact  of  "presence  to  feeling"; 
meanwhile  this  cannot  exist  of  course  apart  from  some  specific 
form  or  nature,  color  quality  being  among  the  "natures"  which 
thus  can  be  existentially  and  immediately  felt.  The  reality  of 
such  a  feeling  awareness,  which  is,  though  it  does  not  in  the 
distinctive  sense  "know"  itself  to  be,  each  man  will  have  to 
determine  by  appeal  to  his  own  experience;  but  the  issue  can- 
not be  settled  fairly  by  ignoring  the  possibility,  and  talking 
as  if  awareness,  or  consciousness,  could  only  mean  "knowledge 
of,"  to  the  exclusion  of  "feeling  of."  And  if  painful  feeling, 
for  example,  be  thus  regarded  as  distinguishable  from  a  "knowl- 
edge" of  pain,  and  as  capable  of  existing  in  the  absence  of 
such  knowledge,  then  the  separation  on  which  Moore^s  realistic 
theory  of  sense  perception  is  based  would  fall  away,  and  we 


G.  E.  Moore  421 

should  be  left,  as  before,  with  a  mental  fact  of  existence  other 
than  the  diaphanous  mental  act. 

And  in  denying  the  more  traditional  analysis,  neo-realism 
has  also,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  a  number  of  further  prob- 
lems of  its  own  to  face.  What  is  the  status  of  these  "sense 
data" — to  use  the  term  most  commonly  adopted  for  indi- 
cating the  absence  of  that  mental  character  that  "sensation" 
suggests?  Are  they  to  be  identified  with  the  physical  object 
of  science?  or  are  they  purely  logical  entities,  like  relations? 
or  have  they 'some  standing  midway  between  the  two?  Are 
they  permanent  and  persisting,  or  intermittent,  and  dependent 
on  the  interaction  of  the  organism  with  its  physical  surround- 
ings? Again,  how  are  we  to  conceive  the  mental  fact,  the 
awareness  or  act  of  knowing?  What  is  an  awareness  which 
seems  to  take  its  specific  character  from  the  independent  reality 
of  which  it  is  aware?  Does  a  purely  diaphanous  act  give  the 
imagination  anything  to  work  upon?  And  however  these  ques- 
tions may  be  answered,  one  general  difficulty  in  any  case  con- 
fronts a  theory  for  which  reality  is  given  to  perception,  or 
knowledge,  face  to  face  in  its  own  proper  person;  how  under 
such  conditions  can  we  ever  be  mistaken?  If  nothing  mental 
intervenes  between  the  act  that  constitutes  consciousness  and 
the  entity  that  is  known,  and  if  the  fact  of  its  being  known 
means  always  that  it  is  identically  present,  what  chance  is  there 
of  its  being  known  otherwise  than  as  it  actually  is?  Evidently 
we  need  a  fuller  construction  of  reality  before  the  situation  can 
be  estimated  fairly. 

§  2.   5.  Alexander 

I.  The  new  theory  of  knowledge  receives  its  most  complete 
and  systematic  formulation  in  S.  Alexander.  In  its  more  typi- 
cally neo-realistic  aspect,  Alexander's  philosophy  involves  a 
psychology  of  the  mental  life  conceived  as  reducible  entirely  to 


422        English  and  American  Philosophy 

will-acts,  all  possible  content  being  placed,  as  the  neo-realistic 
insight  demands,  upon  the  object  side.  It  would  naturally 
seem  as  if  it  might  be  difficult  to  construct  a  science  out  of 
"acts"  whose  common  nature  we  can  describe  only  as  cases  of 
"awareness";  and  it  is  indeed  questionable  whether  Alexander's 
results  will  satisfy  the  scientific  psychologist.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  however,  he  finds  something  more  to  add  to  their  descrip- 
tion; he  discovers  in  mental  acts,  that  is,  an  experienced 
character  of  "direction"  which  is  open  to  psychological  dis- 
crimination. This  character,  which  has  a  metaphysical  bearing 
also,  it  is  not  quite  easy  to  verify  with  assurance;  and  one 
may  feel  a  natural  doubt  whether  Alexander  would  himself 
have  hit  upon  it  had  not  a  metaphysical  presupposition  first 
pointed  the  way.  It  is  not  to  be  interpreted  as  constituted 
simply  by  the  varying  nature  of  the  objects  present  to  con- 
sciousness, though  this  is  what  one  might  have  thought  likely 
from  a  theory  that  defines  consciousness  as  the  common  ele- 
ment in  experience,  denuded  of  all  varieties  of  content;  and 
it  is  distinguished  also  from  muscular  sensations  of  activity 
about  the  head,  which  may  accompany  it.  As  distinct  from 
both  of  these,  Alexander  thinks  he  can  recognize  an  actual 
spatial  movement,  located  vaguely  in  the  brain,  which  charac- 
terizes the  process  of  "enjoying"  or  of  "living  through"  a 
mental  activity,  and  which  varies  literally  in  physical  direction 
with  the  difference  of  objective  content.^ 

Meanwhile  one  point  occasions  some  difficulty  here;  how  do 
we  come  to  have  that  knowledge  of  the  mental  fact  which  we 
clearly  need  to  have  if  there  is  to  be  a  science  of  psychology? 
For  if  knowledge  is  the  relation  between  an  act  and  an  ob- 
jective content,  the  act  itself,  which  by  definition  is  not  a 
content,  cannot  be  known;  it  cannot  place  itself  over  against 
itself  in  the  way  that  knowledge  demands.  Alexander  meets 
the  difficulty  by  distinguishing  two  different  ways  of  knowing, 
— contemplative  knowledge,  where  the  object  is  thus  set  over 

'^  Space,   Time  and  Deity,  Vol.   I,  pp.   97  ff. 


5*.  Alexander  423 

against  the  mind,  and  the  actual  being,  or  experiencing,  or 
enjoying  of  reality,  where  there  is  no  such  inner  duplicity 
of  subject  and  object.  It  is  in  this  second  sense  only  that 
I  can  be  said  to  know  my  own  inner  life,  as  an  immediate 
experience  or  enjoyment,  and  not  as  a  contemplated  object; 
I  am  aware  of  my  awareness  not  as  I  strike  a  ball,  but  as  I 
strike  a  stroke.  And  this  is  quite  possibly  a  real  distinction; 
but  it  does  not  seem  to  help  out  the  particular  difficulty  in 
question.  For  a  science  exists  only  for  contemplative  thought. 
And  while  we  might  be  in  some  immediate  sense  aware  of 
the  present  experience  in  which  we  are  immersed,  this  sort  of 
knowledge  would  not  survive  the  actual  moment  of  the  experi- 
encing; we  could  enjoy  it  inarticulately  so  long  as  it  lasted, 
but  to  talk  of  it  we  should  have  to  bring  it  before  the  mind 
in  a  different  way,  and  a  way  that  by  definition  is  impossible. 
The  intricacies  in  which  Alexander  finds  himself  involved  here 
are  strikingly  apparent  in  his  theory  of  recollection.  When 
I  remember  an  experience  of  mine  in  the  past,  I  am  not  in 
reality,  as  I  might  at  first  sight  suppose,  contemplating  a  past 
event ;  this  would  be,  again,  to  turn  mind  into  a  contemplated 
object.  I  am,  instead,  actually  reliving  the  experience,  but 
living  it  now  in  the  past;  in  the  enjoying  experience,  present, 
past,  and  future  literally  coalesce.  Meanwhile  it  does  not  help 
to  simplify  the  situation  that  in  the  case  of  other  selves,  which 
can  neither  be  enjoyed  nor  contemplated,  Alexander  is  com- 
pelled to  resort  to  still  a  third  definition  of  knowledge,  as  an 
"assurance"  eked  out  by  sympathetic  imagination.^ 

2.  Before  turning  to  the  further  implications  of  this  account 
of  mind,  in  terms  of  its  place  in  the  system  of  reality,  and  its 
relation  to  the  body  in  particular,  a  short  account  will  need 
to  be  given  of  the  general  metaphysical  presuppositions  of 
Alexander's  philosophy.  Briefly,  the  matrix  of  reality  is  com- 
posed of  Space  and  Time,  in  an  intimacy  of  union  which  turns 
either  into  an  abstraction  when  taken  by  itself.    This  ultimate 

"■  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  p.  37. 


424       English  and  American  Philosophy 

stuff  possesses  no  quality  except  the  spatio-temporal  quality 
of  motion.  From  it  certain  fundamental  categories  are  de- 
ducible,  in  the  sense  of  being  determinations  empirically  impli- 
cated in  every  portion  of  space-time;  and  since  there  is  no  be- 
ing that  is  not  made  out  of  space-time  stuff,  they  are  neces- 
sary determinations  for  all  reality  alike.  Thus  existence,  or  de- 
terminate being,  is  the  occupancy  of  any  space-time  in  dis- 
tinction from  any  other  space- time;  substance  is  a  piece  or 
contour  of  space  which  is  the  scene  of  succession;  things  are 
complexes  of  motion  differentiated  within  the  one  all-containing 
and  all-encompassing  system  of  motion ;  relations  are  the  spatio- 
temporal  connections  of  things  which  follow  from  the  continuity 
of  space-time;  causality  is  the  continuity  between  two  different 
motions,  the  continuous  transition  of  one  physical  event  into 
another.  And  since  space-time  is  the  stuff  out  of  which 
all  reality  is  made,  even  the  universals  with  which  logic  deals 
must  themselves  be  identified  with  it;  there  is  no  logical  realm 
of  subsistence  that  has  being  apart  from  the  world  which  the 
physical  sciences  know.  A  universal  is  a  plan  or  form  of 
configuration  of  space- time,  a  spatio-temporal  pattern,  made 
possible  by  the  fact  that  space  is  uniform  or  constant  in  curva- 
ture. Each  finite  complex  possesses  a  universal  character  in 
so  far  as,  by  embodying  laws  of  construction,  it  admits  with- 
out distortion  of  repetition  in  space-time,  that  is,  can  itself 
undergo  change  of  place  or  time,  or  both,  without  alteration, 
or  can  be  replaced  by  some  other  finite.  Such  universals  are 
timeless,  not  as  being  out  of  time,  but  as  being  free  from  limi- 
tation to  a  particular  time. 

3.  For  a  clue  to  the  completer  understanding  of  this  evolv- 
ing universe  of  space-time  elements,  we  may  turn  back  again 
to  reality  on  the  relatively  high  level  of  mind,  and  to  the 
theory  of  the  relation  in  which  mind  stands  to  the  physical 
organism.  Mind — which  is  nothing  but  the  substantial  totality 
of  its  acts  of  awareness — is  neither  completely  identical  with 
nervous  structure,  as  materialism  would  maintain,  nor  yet  a 


S,  Alexander  425 

new  kind  of  stuff  added  to  it,  and  existing  alongside  it.  The 
mind  is  the  nervous  system,  indeed,  space-occupying,  and 
having  lines  of  "direction"  literally  identical  with  those  of 
neural  process ;  but  it  is  the  nervous  system  blossoming  out  into 
a  new  quality  or  dimension — the  capacity  for  awareness.  In 
this  way  we  are  able  to  avoid  both  parallelism  and  interaction- 
ism.  The  nervous  process  is  continuous,  and  never  interrupted 
by  something  of  a  different  order;  and  yet  at  the  same  time 
there  is  no  reason  to  deny  that  mind  has  causal  efficacy,  since 
a  neural  activity  which  is  also  cognitive  is  by  definition  differ- 
ent, and  so  will  act  differently,  from  a  purely  unconscious  one. 

Now  this  same  relation  in  which  mind  stands  to  the  vital 
processes  of  which  it  is  a  new  qualitative  development,  is  also 
to  be  found  at  various  lower  levels  of  the  developing  world. 
Such  a  novel  "quality,"  empirically  discoverable,  though  not 
open  to  metaphysical  explanation,  and  differing  from  the  cate- 
gories in  that  it  is  present  only  sporadically  in  the  universe, 
and  does  not  characterize  every  bit  of  space-time  alike,  appears 
successively  in  the  shape  of  primary  qualities,  of  materiality 
— apprehended  in  the  sensation  of  resistance  offered  to  the 
body, — of  the  secondary  qualities,  of  life — revealed  to  us 
through  organic  and  kinsesthetic  sensations,  which  thus  are  as 
objective  and  non-mental  as  any  others, — and,  finally,  of  mind 
or  consciousness.  This  situation  Alexander  sums  up  by  say- 
ing that,  at  each  level,  the  new  quality  is  the  "mind"  of  the 
special  forms  of  the  lower  level  which  condition  it,  and,  even, 
though  here  the  analogy  confessedly  halts,  that  time  is  the 
mind  of  space. 

There  is  a  sense  in  which,  indeed,  through  his  definition  of 
the  knowledge  relation  as  the  mere  "compresence"  of  a  mental 
act  with  its  object,  this  might  be  held  to  be  more  than  an 
analogy;  if  the  definition  is  taken  seriously,  everything  in  the 
universe  might  actually  appear  to  know  everything  else,  since 
the  relation  of  compresence  holds  universally.  But  even  in 
terms  of  mind  such  a  definition  can  hardly  be  pressed.    There 


426       English  and  American  Philosophy 

is  obvious  utility  in  it  for  a  realism  which  asserts  the  identical 
presence  of  objects  in  knowledge;  if  all  that  is  needed  is  that 
two  things  should  be  together  in  the  same  universe,  our  net  is 
undoubtedly  broad  enough  to  catch  any  case  of  knowing  that 
requires  to  be  explained.  But  the  trouble  is  that  the  explana- 
tion is  too  catholic  and  all-embracing,  and  the  problem  faces 
us,  why  we  should  ever  be  ignorant  of  anything.  Accord- 
ingly Alexander,  when  he  is  speaking  more  precisely,  quali- 
fies the  definition  by  limiting  knowledge  in  its  proper  sense 
to  cases  where  one  of  the  compresent  elements  is  an  ''act 
of  awareness."  This,  however,  is  to  attach  the  peculiar  dif- 
ferentia of  knowledge  to  the  internal  structure  of  the  know- 
ing act,  where  indeed  it  seems  naturally  to  belong,  but  where 
Alexander's  neo-realism  nevertheless  is  precluded  from  finding 
it,  except  in  the  form  of  an  ultimate  mystery  incapable  of 
rational  interpretation.  And  if  the  theory  that  knowledge 
involves  the  identical  presence  of  an  independently  real  object 
leads  us  to  define  knowing  as  a  relation  of  "togetherness,"  the 
discovery  that  this  relation  is  not  an  adequate  account  of  the 
matter  might  very  well  be  taken  as  a  hint  to  revise  the  original 
theory,  rather  than  the  definition. 

4.  There  is  another  difficulty  in  the  interpretation  of  Alex- 
ander's position  here,  of  a  still  more  fundamental  sort.  We 
have  started  with  space-time  as  the  stuff  of  reality.  Now  at 
"best  such  a  doctrine  has  an  initial  strangeness;  space  and  time 
are  very  far  from  what  we  commonly  regard  as  "stuff,"  and 
are  sure  to  a  first  impression  to  appear  too  tenuous  and  abstract 
to  supply  the  material  for  world  building.  Granting,  how- 
ever, that  this  is  nothing  but  a  prejudice,  there  still  remains 
a  question  about  the  status  of  "quality."  Quality  is  called 
a  "new  creation";  but  does  this  mean  all  that  it  might  seem 
to  mean?  Is  a  quality  something  actually  new  in  kind,  and 
different,  therefore,  from  space-time  and  motion?  or  is  it  still 
reducible  to  space-time  elements,  which  have  merely  taken  on 
"special  laws  of  behavior"?      Alexander  asserts  that  qualities 


S.  Alexander  427 

are  "at  once  new,  and  expressible  without  residue  in  terms 
of  the  processes  proper  to  the  level  from  which  they  emerge,"  ^ 
which  is  perplexing,  and  seemingly  an  attempt  to  ride  both 
horses  at  once.  And  whichever  way  we  take  it,  we  find  doubts 
arising.  If  qualities  are  really  different  in  kind,  we  have  the 
very  difficult  notion  of  a  world  of  one  definite  sort  developing 
into  a  world  of  an  essentially  different  sort;  and  in  that  case, 
too,  we  put  in  jeopardy  our  right  to  claim  that  space-time  is 
the  sole  reality.  To  the  degree  in  which  a  world  character  is 
different  from  motion,  it  is  not  motion;  though  since  it  is 
there,  it  must  nevertheless  be  a  part  of  reality.  On  the  other 
hand,  an  attempt  to  identify  new  qualities  with  new  laws 
of  motion  merely,  is  to  seek  to  evade  plain  facts.  This  may 
perhaps  be  successful  when  applied  to  life.  Even  mind,  when 
once  sensational  content  is  dismissed  as  belonging  to  the 
object,  leaving  only  the  occupancy  of  space  and  time,  and 
spatial  direction,  as  its  experienced  characters,  we  might  be 
able  to  reduce  to  space-time  elements.  But  this  would  only 
locate  the  residual  problem  in  another  place — in  the  things 
of  the  outer  world;  and  wherever  we  locate  them,  secondary 
sense  characters  stand  out  as  something  sui  generis,  and  impos- 
sible to  refine  away. 

5.  Meanwhile  the  mind-body  concept  is  used  to  ground  an- 
other and  particularly  ingenious  extension  of  philosophical 
doctrine,  which  brings  us  into  connection  with  the  field  of  re- 
ligion. In  the  infinite  stretch  of  time,  we  are  bound  to  suppose 
that  new  qualities  of  existence  will  appear  in  the  future,  as 
they  have  appeared  in  the  past,  bearing  the  same  relation  to 
the  highest  form  of  organization  in  the  preceding  stage  that 
mind  bears  to  the  nervous  structure.  Thus  we  may  expect 
that  there  will  be — ^perhaps  they  are  already  in  existence — 
angelic  or  Godlike  beings  for  whom  our  minds  will  constitute 
a  body,  as  neural  matter  constitutes  ours.  Such  Gods,  how- 
ever, cannot  be  the  true  objects  of  religion;  for  they  are  them- 

^Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  p.  45. 


428       English  and  American  Philosophy 

selves  but  finite  portions  of  the  space-time  world,  and  for  them 
too  a  new  and  higher  quality  looms  ahead.  The  true  basis  of 
religion  is  not  God,  but  "deity" — the  eternal  urge  of  the  uni- 
verse toward  new  and  ever  higher  forms.  Infinite  deity  thus 
does  not  exist,  since  attainment  would  make  it  finite;  but  the 
world  in  its  infinity  tends  toward  infinite  deity.  An  empirical 
sense  for  this  quality  of  deity  in  the  world,  to  which  the  con- 
ception of  the  onward  sweep  of  the  cosmic  process  gives  specu- 
lative justification,  is  the  distinctive  source  of  religious  feel- 
ing, which  is  a  feeling  sui  generis,  and  not 'to  be  confused  with 
moral  or  aesthetic  values.  It  is  of  course  to  be  recognized  that 
the  higher  form  of  being  to  which  creative  activity  is  pointing 
cannot  itself  be  mind,  any  more  than  mind  can  be  identified 
with  the  vital  organism  of  which  it  is  a  new  qualitative  ex- 
pression. 

6.  The  new  theory  of  perception,  which  is  probably  to  be 
regarded  as  the  distinguishing  mark  of  the  neo-realistic  move- 
ment in  England,  has  been  accepted  more  or  less  fully  by  a 
number  of  recent  writers,  though  without  the  elaborate  meta- 
physical background  which  it  has  in  the  case  of  Alexander.  It 
is  defended  by  Helen  Wodehouse  on  psychological  grounds, — 
which,  however,  stop  short  of  most  of  the  metaphysical  dif- 
ficulties,— and  by  Percy  T.  Nunn  in  connection  with  the  theory 
of  scientific  method;  it  underlies  the  acute  critical  analysis 
of  the  Kantian  philosophy  by  H.  A.  Prichard;  and  it  is  ap- 
parently presupposed,  though  not  very  fully  utilized,  in  the 
epistemology  of  C.  D.  Broad.  Its  most  elaborate  defence, 
next  to  that  by  Alexander,  is  to  be  found  in  the  two  volumes 
of  John  Laird.  A  variant  of  the  same  fundamental  thesis 
appears  in  C.  E.  M.  Joad,  whose  theory  of  knowledge  follows 
views  previously  set  forth  in  various  published  articles  by  G. 
Dawes  Hicks.  Here  sense  knowledge  is  taken  as  the  active 
discrimination  of  qualities  directly  experienced  as  present  in 
a  real  object  or  environment,  the  conclusion  being  drawn  that 
since  these  "appearances"  can  be  distinguished  from  the  Real, 


Bertrand  Russell  429 

as  dependent  for  their  discernment,  though  not  for  their  exist- 
ence, on  the  discriminating  mind,  and  since  the  mind  is  then 
able  by  its  own  activity  to  combine  them  in  various — ^possibly 
mistaken — ways,  a  place  is  left  for  error,  and  so  a  serious 
objection  to  other  forms  of  realism  is  avoided. 


§  3.   Bertrand  Russell 

I.  On  the  whole,  the  outstanding  figure  of  the  new  realism 
is  probably  that  of  Bertrand  Russell.  This  position  he  owes 
in  the  first  place  to  his  command  of  the  modem  mathematical 
logic,  and  to  the  remarkable  subtlety  and  complexity  of  the 
abstract  logical  imagination  which  he  brings  from  this  field 
to  that  of  philosophy  proper.  There  is  a  spectacular  quality 
in  this  well  calculated  to  captivate  disciples,  and  arouse  the 
conviction,  shared  by  Russell  himself,  that  philosophy  has  at 
length,  and  for  the  first  time,  entered  on  its  inheritance,  and 
that  hereafter  no  metaphysician  need  apply  who  cannot  handle 
expertly  the  tools  of  symbolic  logic. 

And  irrespective  of  the  importance  of  his  detailed  opinions, 
there  is  this  further  title  also  to  distinction  which  Russell 
possesses;  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  burden  of  his  phi- 
losophy is  pure  logic  and  impersonal  truth-seeking,  he  stands 
out  as  one  of  the  very  few  among  the  newer  realists  through 
whose  arguments  there  shows  a  vivid  emotional  temperament, 
without  which  philosophy  tends  always  to  become  a  mere  in- 
tellectual game.  For  Russell,  as  for  Spinoza,  philosophy  is  the 
austere  vision  of  eternal  truth,  majestic  in  its  isolation  from 
man's  paltry  life.  It  is  not  the  vision,  even,  of  man's  earthly 
residence,  but  of  the  unchanging  bonds  of  logical  implication, 
which  are  as  sublime,  and  perhaps  more  interesting  in  their 
novelty,  when  they  are  the  outgrowth  of  assumptions  that  have 
no  special  pertinency  to  the  world  of  empirical  fact.  To  this 
world,  and  to  man's  temporal  life  within  it,  there  can  belong 


430       English  and  American  Philosophy 

little  to  satisfy  our  aspirations;  for  the  philosophic  vision,  the 
game  is  not  worth  the  candle.  Only  on  the  firm  foundation  of 
unyielding  despair  can  the  soul's  habitation  henceforth  be 
built.  "To  defy  with  Promethean  constancy  a  hostile  uni- 
verse, to  keep  its  evils  always  in  view,  always  actively  hated, 
to  refuse  no  pain  that  the  malice  of  Power  can  invent,  ap- 
pears to  be  the  duty  of  all  who  will  not  bow  before  the  inevi- 
table." But  it  is  just  through  this  disillusionment  which  life 
brings,  that  philosophy  gets  its  chance  and  its  justification ;  the 
realm  of  eternal  logical  natures,  of  ideals  too  high  to  be  em- 
bodied, is  that  which  alcne  is  left  as  a  refuge  to  the  spirit  of  the 
free  man  who  refuses  to  abase  himself  before  the  God  of  things 
as  they  are. 

2.  For  Russell,  then,  as  for  philosophical  revolutionaries 
frequently  in  the  past,  nearly  all  that  hitherto  has  gone  under 
the  name  of  philosophy  it  is  necessary  now  to  scrap;  in  par- 
ticular, the  notion  that  philosophy  has  anything  to  say  about 
the  hopes  and  interests  of  man  as  a  human  being,  or  that  it 
can  attempt  the  task  of  thinking  out  a  reasonable  way  of 
looking  at  the  universe  into  which  these  shall  enter  as  a  sig- 
nificant factor,  is  to  be  set  resolutely  aside.  Such  a  task  has 
two  defects:  it  does  not  give  occasion  for  those  qualities  of 
austerity  and  intellectual  distinction  which  characterize  the 
superior  mind,  and  which  require  for  their  exercise  an  aristo- 
cratic detachment  and  condescension;  and  it  cannot  meet  the 
test  of  logical  demonstration,  which  alone  gives  philosophy  the 
title  to  be  called  scientific.  It  is  evident  that  there  is  no  par- 
ticular use  in  trying  to  reason  with  this  delimitation  of  the 
philosopher's  task;  it  is  only  one  more  of  the  many  attempts 
to  give  legislative  power  to  a  personal  type  of  interest.  A  nar- 
row set  of  very  technical  problems  it  may  be  that  the  new 
method  is  calculated  to  advance, — ^problems  that  have  always 
been  incidental  to  the  work  of  the  great  philosophers,  however, 
rather  than  constitutive  of  it.  But  so  long  as  men's  intellectual 
interests  do  actually  have  a  wider  swing,  the  whole  history  of 


Bertrand  Russell  431 

philosophy  shows  that  no  attempt  to  browbeat  them  into  ac- 
cepting some  particular  ideal  of  "science,"  which  fails  to  gratify 
what  they  feel  as  a  legitimate  curiosity,  can  possibly  succeed. 
What  Russell  himself  indeed  would  seem  to  be  thinking  of 
under  the  head  of  "ethics"  will  possibly  account  in  part  for 
his  indifference;  from  his  own  pessimistic  standpoint  of  re- 
bellion against  society,  ethics  is  apparently  identified  with  the 
social  camouflage  of  customary  morality,  through  which  exist- 
ing powers  and  institutions  create  a  morale  favorable  to  their 
own  continuance.  But  that  all  human  values  whatsoever,  in- 
cluding the  valuation  which  condemns  the  evils  and  hypocrisies 
of  the  world,  are  to  be  taken  simply  as  facts  of  personal 
opinion,  with  no  attempt  to  adjust  them  philosophically,  or 
to  think  them  in  their  relation  to  the  universe  at  large,  can  in 
the  nature  of  the  case  have  itself  nothing  but  a  personal  whim 
to  back  it. 

3.  Meanwhile  it  is  one  unfortunate  consequence  of  a  dif- 
ference in  the  conception  of  aim  and  method  here,  that  the 
philosopher  who  happens  primarily  to  be  interested  in  the 
"real"  world  finds  it  difficult  ever  to  be  quite  sure  to  what 
extent  Russell's  results  actually  compete  with  his  own.  Phi- 
losophy, it  appears,  is  concerned  only  with  those  logical  re- 
lationships that  belong  to  all  possible  worlds,  and  any  prop- 
erty by  which  our  actual  world  is  distinguished  from  others 
that  are  abstractly  possible  must  be  ignored  by  it.  But 
truths  that  hold  of  every  possible  world  cannot  give  us  any 
particularly  useful  information  about  the  present  one,  or  help 
much  in  solving  problems  to  which  its  nature  in  particular 
gives  rise;  and  unless,  therefore,  one  finds  his  sufficient  blessed- 
ness in  the  exercise  of  logical  ingenuity  for  its  own  sake,  he  will 
get  no  special  comfort  from  the  new  philosophy.  In  this  pure 
logic  differs  from  logic  applied  to  science.  No  discovery  of 
an  actual  causal  series  can  be  entirely  irrelevant  to  human  life; 
but  it  is  easily  possible,  by  taking  arbitrary  postulates,  to 
trace  very  definite  logical  consequences  from  them,  and  yet 


432       English  and  American  Philosophy 

for  these  consequences  to  be  practically  barren  and  lacking 
in  human  interest.  Philosophy,  if  it  is  to  be  felt  by  most 
men  as  significant,  will  have  to  undertake  the  rationalization 
of  actual  human  beliefs;  and  such  beliefs  inevitably  take  us 
beyond  the  mere  manipulation  of  hypothetical  concepts,  and 
get  their  content  from  the  practical  demands  of  life  and  or- 
ganic needs. 

And  to  the  lay  mind,  this  leads  to  a  question  that  arises  con- 
tinually in  connection  with  Russell's  logical  doctrine;  when  one 
finds  various  new  and  startling  information  about  this  or  that 
familiar  category,  put  forward  as  the  indubitable  testimony 
of  logic,  and  then  turns  to  the  category  itself  only  to  learn 
that,  in  order  to  insure  these  consequences,  it  has  to  be  de- 
fined in  a  way  that  shows  only  a  remote  connection  with  his 
familiar  human  meanings,  he  is  at  a  loss  to  determine  whether 
he  has  really  found  out  more  about  the  world  in  which  he 
lives,  or  whether  he  has  only  found  what  follows  from  a  set 
of  definitions  that  make  no  pretence  of  conforming  to  his 
natural  convictions.  So,  for  example,  of  the  new  doctrine  of 
the  infinite,  which  Russell  regards  as  perhaps  the  supreme 
achievement  of  the  human  intellect.  I  may  define  the  infinite 
in  such  a  way  that  it  solves  certain  dialectical  puzzles ;  and  for 
the  technical  purposes  of  the  mathematician  this  may  be 
sufficient, — whether  it  is  so  or  not,  is  for  the  mathematician 
of  course  to  decide.  Meanwhile,  however,  other  of  the  tra- 
ditional puzzles  about  the  infinite,  and  indeed  the  only  ones 
that  have  greatly  impressed  the  popular  mind,  may  very  well 
be  left  where  they  were  before,  simply  because  the  new  defi- 
nition does  not  come  into  contact  with  them  at  all.  For  these 
difficulties  can  hardly  be  disentangled  from  the  imaginative 
notion  of  a  real  world  actually  existing  in  time;  and  an  infinity 
that  is  a  property  of  classes  which,  as  infinite,  are  given  all 
at  once  by  the  defining  property  of  their  members,  so  that  no 
question  of  "completion"  ever  arises,  has  nothing  apparently  in 
common  with  them.     Instead,  it  goes  on  to  reconstruct  the 


Bert  rand  Russell  433 

notion  of  time  itself  to  meet  its  dialectical  demands,  and  so 
gets  still  further  from  the  common  world  of  experience. 

Of  course  the  philosopher  may  deride  the  claims  of  the 
imagination,  and  may  insist  that  logic  is  the  only  judge.  But 
this  is  one  question  on  which  logic  cannot  itself  pronounce — 
its  own  supremacy.  Naturally,  this  does  not  mean  that  we 
have  the  right  if  we  choose  to  be  illogical  or  inconsistent.  But 
whether  a  logical  formulation  of  conditions  sufficient  to  meet 
a  purely  logical  demand  can  be  allowed  to  dispense  with  the 
need  for  an  appeal  to  concrete  experience  capable  of  being 
imaginatively  contemplated,  nothing  in  the  way  of  dialectic 
merely  can  determine.  For  one  who  loves  (logical)  perfection 
more  than  life,  there  will  be  one  answer;  for  one  who  loves  life 
more  than  logical  perfection  there  is  likely  to  be  a  different 
one.  And  the  fact  accordingly  that  Russell's  own  results  are 
quite  reckless  in  their  disregard  of  what  things  are  experienced 
as,  will  seem  unimportant,  or  very  important,  according  to 
this  initial  bias. 

4.  It  becomes  somewhat  easier  to  appraise  Russell's  method, 
when  we  turn  from  the  technical  abstractions  of  mathematics 
to  a  problem  that  supposedly  has  to  do  with  the  real  world 
— the  problem  of  sense  perception.  But  even  here  it  is  not 
certain  that  a  decisive  issue  can  be  drawn.  What  in  his  later 
writings  Russell  apparently  is  trying  to  do,  is  to  show  that  on 
the  basis  of  certain  relatively  undeniable  data — namely,  the 
sense  data,  or  sensibles,  which  any  honest  analysis  of  experi- 
ence is  bound  to  leave  on  our  hands  whatever  else  it  may  seem 
possible  to  refine  away,  and  the  ultimate  laws  of  logic, — we 
can,  by  a  purely  logical  construction  which  makes  no  appeal 
to  unexperienced  or  inferred  entities,  reach  a  result  that  will 
show  all  the  properties  actually  found  in  the  experienced  ob- 
jects of  perception.  Now  even  if  this  attempt  succeeds,  it  will 
still  leave  the  main  issue  unsettled.  It  is  quite  possible  that, 
by  the  exercise  of  a  sufficient  amount  of  logical  ingenuity,  cer- 
tain specified  results  might  be  shown  to  be  the  outcome  of  a 


434       English  and  American  Philosophy 

number  of  different  logical  constructions,  and  yet  no  one  of 
these  represent  the  actual  truth  of  the  matter.  Russell  starts 
by  assuming  that  if  such  a  logical  construction  can  be  car- 
ried out,  it  has  the  right  of  way,  and  ought  to  be  preferred  over 
any  competing  method.  But  this  is,  once  more,  to  take  for 
granted  what  needs  establishing.  As  an  interesting  exercise 
in  logic,  the  thing  may  be  worth  attempting;  and  for  one  who 
is  interested  in  trying  it,  it  will  indeed  be  a  part  of  the  method 
to  make  as  few  assumptions  as  possible.  But  there  is  no  de- 
cisive reason  whatever  for  supposing  that  it  gets  us  nearer  the 
truth  than  other  methods  would,  unless  we  already  presuppose 
the  superiority  of  logic  to  existence.  The  ideal  would  be,  as 
Russell  recognizes,  the  construction  of  the  object  out  of  my 
own  sense  data  solely,  since  other  persons'  data  are  for  me 
inferred  facts,  and  therefore  do  not  have  the  inevitability  that 
the  method  desiderates.  But  this  furnishes  a  good  test  of 
the  plausibility  of  the  ideal  itself.  If  I  could  get  along  without 
other  persons,  I  should  be  logically  so  much  the  better  off,  and 
no  one  would  have  cause  for  complaint  except  those  in  whom 
the  human  affections  happen  unfortunately  to  be  "stronger 
than  the  desire  for  logical  economy."  But  this  candid  ad- 
mission of  a  bias  will  of  course,  with  most  readers,  have  the 
opposite  effect  from  that  which  Russell  intends;  if  it  comes  to 
be  a,  choice  between  our  right  to  posit  other  selves,  and  an 
interest  in  logical  economy,  the  superiority  of  the  method  of 
construction  is  likely  to  be  compromised. 

And  once  grant  the  right,  for  reasons  shown  if  not  for  purely 
logical  reasons,  to  assume  certain  realities,  and  in  all  other 
respects  Russell's  method  loses  entirely  the  advantage  of  sim- 
plicity. We  are,  as  will  appear,  compelled  to  multiply  entities 
to  a  degree  that  to  the  imagination  is  overwhelming;  while 
as  an  account  of  the  psychological  process  of  arriving  at  a 
belief  in  objects,  there  is  no  comparison  between  the  involved 
intricacy  of  Russell's  theory,  and  the  straightforwardness  of 
common-sense  dualism.    In  fact,  it  would  almost  seem  that  the 


Bertrand  Russell  435 

demand  it  makes  upon  logical  ingenuity  is  what  recommends 
the  method.  And  if  it  is  held  that  the  theory  does  not  pre- 
tend to  be  genetic,  then  it  may  be  asked  by  what  short  cut 
man  could  have  arrived  at  a  complex  logical  construction  with- 
out the  use  of  logic;  and  any  plausible  answer  is  bound  to 
introduce  factors  that  throw  doubt  on  Russell's  logical  bias. 

The  theory  is  briefly  to  this  effect.  The  data  out  of  which 
the  external  world  is  to  be  constructed  are,  not  permanent 
objects,  but  those  irreducible  and  momentary  qualia  into  which, 
when  he  looks  at  an  object,  an  observer's  experience  can  be 
analyzed.  These  sense  data  are  not  to  be  regarded  as  sub- 
jective; they  are  distinct  from  the  mental  act  which  appre- 
hends them,  and  since  they  are  the  elements  out  of  which  the 
physical  world  is  constituted,  they  may  even  rightly  be  called 
physical.  But  neither  are  they  the  persisting  physical  objects 
of  common  sense.  While  independent  of  "mind,"  to  the 
making  of  them  goes  a  necessary  relation  to  an  organism ;  they 
exist,  that  is,  outside  the  mind,  without  continuing  to  exist 
when  we  are  no  longer  looking  at  them.  These  appearances 
which  the  world  presents  to  me  from  one  particular  point  of 
view  may  be  called  a  "perspective";  and  besides  the  actual 
perspectives  which  enter  into  my  experience  and  that  of  other 
human  beings,  there  are  an  infinite  number  of  other  points 
of  view,  to  each  of  which  a  certain  setj)fjlata,  or  possible  data, 
belongs. 

Now  the  common  belief  is  that  there  is  one  real  "thing" 
which  the  observer  may  view  from  different  standpoints^  each 
of  these  revealing  to  him  a  different  "appearance"  of  the  thing; 
for  Russell's  theory,  on  the  contrary,  the  appearances  are  the 
sole  facts  that  are  real,  and  the  thing  is  only  that  whole  sys- 
tem of  appearances  of  which  each  "aspect"  of  a  thing  is  a 
member.  A  thing  can  thus  be  defined  as  the  entire  class  of 
its  appearances^  including  not  only  those  appearances  that  are 
actual  sense  data  to  some  one,  but  the  sensibilia,  or  possible 
sense  data,  which  represent  the  appearances  that  wotdd  arise 


436       English  and  American  Philosophy 

were  a  certain  kind  of  observer  in  a  certain  relation  to  the 
object.  These  appearances  are  not  in  a  common  space;  other- 
wise we  should  have  the  task  of  explaining  how  different  qualia 
could  occupy  the  same  space  at  the  same  time.  Each  observer 
has  only  his  own  private  space,  and  no  place  in  the  private 
world  of  one  observer  is  identical  with  a  place  in  the  private 
world  of  another  observer;  the  common  space  is,  again,  a  logical 
construction  from  these  private  spaces.  Given  an  object  in  one 
perspective,  then,  the  problem  is  to  form  the  system  of  all 
the  objects  correlated  with  it  in  all  the  perspectives,  in  a. way 
to  give  a  meaning  to  the  properties  which  belong  to  the  com- 
mon-sense notion  of  a  single  thing  viewed  under  a  multiplicity 
of  aspects  by  many  observers,  and  located  at  a  definite  point  in 
a  space  common  to  all  of  them;  and  this  is  what  by  a  very 
ingenious,  but  complicated  and  difficult  construction,  Russell 
thinks  he  has  satisfactorily  accomplished. 

5.  Now  to  begin  with,  Russell's  position  would  be  more 
persuasive  were  it  not  that,  even  if  "things"  were  actually  as 
real  as  ordinarily  we  think  them  to  be,  it  still  would  be  pos- 
sible to  justify  the  same  data,  and  to  effect  the  same  con- 
struction. As  a  matter  of  fact  we  plainly  never  should  have 
reached  the  notion  of  perspectives  to  begin  with,  except  in 
terms  of  appearances  to  a  "mind"  occasioned  by  a  cause 
existing  in  a  common  space,  and  standing  in  relation  to  dif- 
ferent organisms.  And  not  only  is  this  so;  it  is  significant 
that  we  cannot  state  Russell's  theory — at  least  it  would  be 
a  highly  difficult  task  which  he  makes  no  move  to  undertake 
— without  continuing  at  every  step  to  presuppose  the  common- 
sense  world,  and  using  it  to  give  meaning  to  our  description. 
With  this  world  assumed,  an  object  would  of  course  be  found 
appearing  under  various  forms  according  to  the  position  or  the 
distance  of  an  observer;  and  these  appearances  might  be  ar- 
ranged in  series,  such  as  could  be  used  to  define  the  location 
of  the  object  which  they  presuppose,  and  on  which  their 
character  depends.    But  just  because  the  undertaking  is  equally 


Bert  rand  Russell  437 

compatible  with  two  hypotheses,  its  success  cannot  be  used  to 
give  one  of  them  an  advantage  over  the  other.  This  advan- 
tage can  only  come,  again,  from  an  initial  presumption  against 
existents;  and  for  one  who  does  not  share  this  presumption, 
Russell's  attempt  will  only  go  to  show — what  hardly  needed 
proving — that  when  we  have  analyzed  a  complex  situation  into 
elements,  we  can  reverse  the  process  in  a  way  to  redefine  the 
whole  into  which  the  elements  enter.  What  has  been  said  above 
will  seem  to  him  to  indicate  clearly  that  what  the  logical  con- 
struction starts  from  is  not  a  mass  of  isolated  sense  data,  but 
data  already  regarded  as  belonging  to  a  system,  which  system 
has  constantly  to  be  held  before  us  if  we  are  not  to  lose  our 
way  completely. 

6.  And  it  will  probably  seem  to  him,  also,  that  apart  from 
the  lack  of  proof,  and  from  the  offence  to  common  convictions, 
there  are  serious  difficulties  in  any  theory  so  far  advanced  about 
the  metaphysical  standing  of  these  sensibles  which  logic  uses, 
and  in  the  account  of  knowledge  Vv^hich  they  involve.  The 
notion  of  sense  data  is  least  complicated  in  Russell's  earlier 
writings,  which  follow,  with  some  modifications,  the  familiar 
neo-realistic  doctrine  of  an  act  of  awareness  directed  upon  a 
non-mental  entity  or  "object";  and  in  so  far,  it  shares  in  the 
objections  to  which  such  a  doctrine  is  exposed.  These  go 
back  in  particular  to  one  fundamental  matter  of  dispute;  is  it 
so  that  the  immediate  "objects"  of  knowledge  consist  of  quali- 
tative "natures,"  or  essences?  This  is  truer  to  appearances 
than  to  say  that  we  know  sensations;  but  it  still  does  not  natu- 
rally fit  the  facts.  Qualia,  for  common  sense,  characterize  the 
object  of  perception;  they  do  not  constitute  it.  We  seem  to 
know  concrete  existences,  qualified  in  various  ways;  and  it  is 
forcing  language  to  speak  of  red  or  sour  as  an  "object."  It  is 
only  as  we  thus  reinterpret  sense  experience,  however,  that  the 
distinctive  tenet  of  neo-realism  gets  a  standing.  On  the  more 
natural  showing,  "qualia"  may  indeed  be  literally  present  in 
experience, — indeed  "duahsm"  in  its  own  way  would  assent 


438       English  and  American  Philosophy 

to  this, — but  "objects"  are  plainly  not  so  conceived;  and  the 
outcome  is,  accordingly,  the  need  to  reduce  reality  from  exist- 
ence to  logical  natures,  on  which  comments  already  have 
been  made. 

It  should  be  added  here  that  Russell  himself  would  not 
allow  that  there  is  any  point  to  this  objection;  the  new  logic 
has  already  shown  it  to  be  groundless.  The  difficulty  is  only 
met,  however,  by  the  device  already  noted — by  redefining 
existence,  that  is.  And  the  presuppositions  of  this  new  defi- 
nition are  quite  different  from  the  simpler  and  more  familiar 
meaning  of  the  term.  Russell  has  confessedly  in  mind  the 
"existence  theorem"  of  mathematics — that,  for  example,  "an 
even  prime  exists."  ^  And  used  in  such  a  connection,  it  is 
no  doubt  possible  to  define  existence  as  the  property  of  a  pro- 
positional  function — an  expression,  that  is,  containing  one  or 
more  undetermined  constituents,  and  becoming  a  proposition 
as  soon  as  the  undetermined  constituents  are  determined.  So 
interpreted,  the  statement  that  "men  exist"  may  be  translated 
into  the  form,  "there  are  values  of  x  for  which  the  propositional 
function  'x  is  a  man'  is  true";  this  is  all  one  means  by  saying 
"there  are  men."  And  having  thus  ruled  that  existence  shall 
have  just  this  meaning,  and  no  other,  it  is  a  simple  matter  to 
conclude  that  particular  objects  do  not  "exist";  the  statement 
that  they  do  exist  is  not  so  much  false  as  meaningless,  since  we 
have  limited  the  application  of  the  term  to  something  that  is 
never  a  particular.  But  it  seems  evident  that  this  is  to  ignore 
the  alternative  position,  rather  than  to  disprove  it;  if  the  issue 
involves  a  possible  sense  attaching  to  existence  which  lies 
beyond  the  realm  of  logic, — a  meaning  everywhere  implicated, 
at  any  rate,  in  the  practical  life  which  Russell  disparages, — it 
cannot  be  settled  by  starting  from  a  purely  logical  property. 
And  even  the  definition  itself,  when  we  pass  from  logic  to  com- 
mon life,  does  not  succeed  in  escaping  the  problem.  "There  is 
a  value  of  x  for  which  'x  is  a  man' 

^Monist,  Vol.  XXIX,  p.  348. 


Bertrand  Russell  439 

to  the  unsophisticated  to  mean,  "some  particular  instance  exists 
to  make  the  general  claim  a  true  one."  And  to  avoid  this, 
it  is  necessary,  again,  to  construct  a  whole  new  theory  of 
reality,  for  which  "sense  data,"  and  "facts,"  stand  for  ultimate 
and  undefinable  entities;  and  this  brings  up  once  more  the 
same  questions  with  which  we  started. 

7.  Russell's  own  more  specific  doctrine  of  sense  data,  in 
its  later  developments,  appears  to  be  a  compromise.  It  still 
starts  from  the  doubtful  thesis  that  the  original  objects  of 
sense  perception  are  qualia,  and  not  things;  without  this,  the 
presumption  in  favor  of  logical  construction  would  come  much 
less  easily.  But  in  taJdng  these  qualia  now  as  momentary  facts 
dependent  on  the  organism,  the  notion  of  the  "physical"  is 
considerably  complicated.  Their  infinite  number  and  variety 
is  in  the  first  place  to  be  reckoned  with  as  a  drawback — a  quale 
for  every  possible  standpoint  of  every  possible  kind  of  organ- 
ism; nor  is  the  relation  of  actual  to  possible  data  left  very 
plain.  One  interesting  consequence  is  the  explanation  of  "un- 
real" objects;  ghosts  and  centaurs  are  things  equally  real  with 
trees  and  mountains,  except  that  they  cannot  be  correlated  in 
the  same  space  construction, — an  explanation  convenient  for 
a  theory  of  error,  but  not  intrinsically  convincing.  Meanwhile 
logically,  also,  the  situation  is  at  least  confused  when  we  find 
these  ultimate  qualia,  out  of  which  all  objects  are  constructed, 
themselves  made  dependent  upon  the  causal  activity  of  com- 
mon-sense objects — the  sense  organ  and  the  environment. 

There  remain,  it  may  be  added,  two  speculative  possibilities 
for  the  interpretation  of  sense  data — either  to  cease  trying  to 
find  any  distinctive  status  for  sensibles  as  opposed  to  uni- 
versalSj  and  to  reduce  everything  alike  explicitly  to  pure  logic 
— a  path  which  certain  of  the  American  neo-realists  are  inclined 
to  follow, — or  else  to  abandon  the  neo-realistic  distinction  be- 
tween sense  data  and  sensations,  and  return  to  sensationalism. 
This  last  alternative  is  already  suggested  in  Russell's  theo- 
retical preference  for  solipsism;  and  it  is  the  doctrine  which  he 


440       English  and  American  Philosophy 

adopts  explicitly  in  his  latest  volume.^  But  in  thus  abandon- 
ing the  neo-realistic  conception  of  "awareness,"  at  least  the 
foundation  for  our  knowledge  of  a  realm  of  logical  entities 
would  seem  to  call  for  reconsideration. 


§  4.   American  Neo-Realism.    Perry.    Holt 

I.  In  America,  neo-realism  first  became  a  generally  recog- 
nized philosophical  tendency  through  the  publication,  in  191 2, 
of  a  cooperative  volume  by  six  writers,  called  The  New  Real- 
ism; though  for  some  years  before  this  it  had  been  trying  itself 
out  in  a  more  tentative  fashion  in  the  philosophical  journals. 
In  just  what  relation  it  ought  to  be  regarded  as  standing  to 
English  neo-realism,  it  is  a  little  difficult  to  determine.  The 
American  group  is  plainly  influenced  very  greatly  by  the  logical 
doctrines  of  Russell,  even  more  so  on  the  whole  than  the  ma- 
jority of  his  English  colleagues;  it  agrees,  also,  in  discarding 
sensations  and  images  as  psychical .  existents,  and  insists  upon 
the  identical  presence  of  the  object  in  knowledge.  But  the  in- 
terpretation of  consciousness  itself  takes  an  entirely  different 
turn.  The  mental  act  of  awareness  which  has  so  fundamental 
a  place  in  British  neo-reaHsm  is  abandoned  altogether,  and 
instead  there  is  adopted  a  behavioristic  metaphysics,  where 
a  bodily  response  takes  the  place  of  the  peculiar  entity  called 
awareness,  and  mind  is  conceived  as  a  composite  made  up  of 
the  organism  which  reacts  selectively  to  a  cross  section  of  the 
world,  and  of  the  objects  to  which  it  thus  responds,  these 
last  being  identical  with  the  "content"  of  consciousness.  The 
various  essays  in  the  book  show  indeed  a  certain  amount  of 
divergence,  which  on  the  whole  has  tended  to  increase  since  the 
book's  appearance;  and  the  position  of  W.  P.  Montague,  in 
particular,  with  its  attempt  to  explain  consciousness  in  terms 
of  energy,  and  knowledge  as  the  relation  of  self-transcending 

*  The  Analysis  of  Mind. 


American  Neo-Realism  441 

implication  which  brain  states  sustain  to  their  extra-organic 
causes,  has  no  obvious  community  with  the  "search-light"  con- 
ception to  which  most  of  the  others  subscribe.  But  on  a  num- 
ber of  general  points  there  is  a  fairly  exact  agreement: — that 
the  being  and  the  nature  of  objects  of  knowledge  are  not  con- 
ditioned on  their  being  known;  that  these  objects  are  directly 
present  to  the  knowing  consciousness,  and  are  not  mediated  by 
sensations  or  ideas  numerically  distinct  from  them;  that  epi- 
stemology  is  not  logically  fundamental  to  science  or  meta- 
physics; that  an  entity  possesses  some  relations  independently 
of  others,  so  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  know  all  of  its  relations 
in  order  to  know  any  of  them;  that  analysis,  consequently,  is 
the  true  method  of  philosophy,  as  against  the  anti-intellectual- 
ism  of  some  modern  philosophers;  that  entities  may  have 
being  in  a  Platonic  sense  which  is  neither  physical  nor  psychi- 
cal, but  "neutral";  and  that  there  is  empirically  a  presumption 
in  favor  of  pluralism  rather  than  of  monism. 

2.  The  psychological  implications  of  the  behavioristic 
theory  of  knowledge  have  been  most  fully  explored  by  R.  B. 
Perry.  The  theory  is,  to  repeat,  that  the  knower  is  the  physical 
organism.  This  organism  reacts  to  certain  selected  parts  of  the 
environment,  and  thereby  constitutes  these  portions  the  con- 
tent of  knowledge;  the  same  identical  objects  exist  also  as 
physical  facts,  and  all  that  happens  to  them,  when  they  be- 
come conscious,  is  that  they  get  a  special  connection,  a  special 
grouping,  through  their  relation  to  the  reacting  body.  The 
whole  situation  accordingly  is  interpretable  without  going  be- 
yond the  realities  with  which  the  physical  sciences  deal,  and 
having  to  assume  a  special  sort  of  reality  called  consciousness, 
or  knowledge,  or  the  psychical.  The  psychical  is  only  the 
physical  related  in  a  peculiar  fashion;  and  the  same  methods 
of  external  observation  that  are  sufficient  in  the  physical 
sciences,  can  be  applied  to  the  psychological  life  of  mind  as 
well. 

Behaviorism  as  an  ideal  of  method  applied  to  the  actual 


442        English  and  American  Philosophy 

science  of  psychology  it  is  not  necessary  to  bring  in  question 
here.  It  undoubtedly  supplies  a  convenient  mode  of  approach 
to  certain  problems;  though  it  is  probable  that  the  zeal  for 
innovation  has  led  it  to  make  much  wider  claims  than  will 
eventually  be  sustained.  But  even  were  it  finally  to  prove 
sufficient  for  the  needs  of  psychology  as  a  special  science, 
philosophy  would  still  have  to  justify  it  in  the  light  of  larger 
considerations.  And  when  we  try  to  defend  the  conception 
as  an  ultimate  creed,  it  will  appear  to  begin  with  that  all  the 
facts  appealed  to  are  capable  of  being  construed  in  a  dif- 
ferent way,  which  retains  the  traditional  prejudice  in  favor 
of  an  "inner"  life,  not  open  directly  to  the  gaze  of  an  observer. 
It  is  true,  as  the  behaviorist  contends,  that  in  the  particular 
field  of  conscious  experience  which  we  call  sense  perception, 
the  objects  perceived  are  identical  with  the  part  of  the  en- 
vironment to  which  the  perceiving  organism  is  related  in 
the  way  of  response;  and  since  an  observer  can  himself  per- 
ceive this  organic  reaction  along  with  approximately  the  same 
field  of  objects,  he  can  tell  directly,  within  certain  limits  of 
error,  what  the  content  of  my  mind  at  the  moment  is.  Equally, 
though  with  much  more  chance  of  mistake,  he  can,  without 
necessarily  asking  for  information  from  his  subject,  interpret 
the  purposes  of  a  human  agent,  by  watching  to  see  how  he 
reacts  to  things  bodily.  But  once  grant  our  ability  on  any 
terms  to  know  real  objects,  and  there  is  a  perfectly  simple 
way,  again,  of  accounting  for  this;  it  is  because  the  observer 
has  himself  the  same  inner  experience,  in  an  identical  situation, 
that  he  finds  the  content  of  knowledge  which  reveals  the  ex- 
ternal world  the  same  for  him  as  for  his  subject,  rather  than 
because  physical  facts,  in  special  relationships,  displace  the 
mental  altogether. 

And  to  this  latter  thesis  there  are  positive  objections  that 
appeal  strongly  to  common  sense.  In  the  first  place  our 
natural  judgment  would  unquestionably  be,  that  whatever  may 
be  true  of  "things,"  other  persons  do  at  least  have  something  in 


R.  B.  Perry  443 

the  nature  of  ideas,  sensations,  feelings,  which  are  not  identi- 
cally present  in  my  consciousness,  and  which  can  never  be. 
Perry  consistently  discards  this  conviction  as  a  mistaken 
prejudice,  but  without  notable  success  in  placating  common 
sense.^  What  in  the  end  his  argument  comes  to  is,  that  we 
do  as  a  matter  of  fact  know  the  very  same  pain,  the  very  same 
idea,  of  which  our  neighbor  is  conscious,  since  otherwise  our 
minds  would  never  meet  on  common  ground;  and  if  the  case 
is  actually  so,  it  is  inconsistent  with  the  supposition  that  con- 
sciousness is  "private"  to  a  single  person.  Now  if  a  thing 
be  reducible  to  its  logical  nature  or  description,  as  neo-realism 
tends  to  hold,  the  conclusion  is  a  fair  one;  the  same  logical 
content  that  characterizes  the  pain  is  indeed  present  to  my 
knowing  consciousness,  else  I  could  not  know  it  for  what  it 
is.  But  on  the  more  familiar  supposition  that  the  existence 
of  a  fact  is  something  over  and  above  its  descriptive  charac- 
teristics, sameness  of  content  ceases  to  identify  the  two  ex- 
periences. And  most  people  it  will  be  impossible  to  argue 
out  of  the  conviction  that  there  is  a  reality,  a  tang,  a  feeling 
presence,  which  sharply  separates  the  pain  my  neighbor  feels 
from  any  idea  of  it  that  I  can  possibly  form ;  and  that  this  ac- 
tual pain  is  something  that  never  is  brought  within  the  circle 
of  what  I  myself  directly  experience. 

About  an  "idea"  there  is  more  chance  that  the  plain  man  may 
find  himself  confused  by  argument,  since  an  idea,  in  one  of 
its  meanings,  may  be  regarded  as  itself  just  a  bit  of  logical 
content;  it  is  possible  to  say  therefore,  in  a  more  literal  sense, 
that  we  have  the  "same"  idea.  But  still  it  would  commonly 
be  recognized  that,  in  addition  to  the  identity  of  abstract 
content,  there  is  also  the  psychological  fact — the  awareness 
of  having  an  idea ;  and  as  a  psychological  existence,  this  is  still 
different  in  the  two  cases.  And  as  a  reply  to  this  the  logical 
consideration  in  which  Perry  finds  the  source  of  our  mistaken 
prejudice — the  failure  to  recognize,  namely,  that  an  identical 
^Present  Philosophical  Tendencies,  pp.  286  ff. 


444        English  and  American  Philosophy 

element  can  belong  to  more  than  one  complex  at  the  same 
time — is  quite  irrelevant,  since  it  is  itself  interpreted  in  a 
way  that  begs  the  question.  It  is  true  that  the  same  a  may 
be  the  second  letter  in  man,  and  the  fifth  in  mortal,  if  we  ab- 
stract from  a's  actual  existence,  and  think  of  it  only  in  its 
character  as  denoting  a  certain  sound;  as  an  actual  letter  in 
actual  printed  words,  however,  the  a's  are  not  the  same,  and 
the  illustration  turns  against  its  user. 

3.  Meanwhile  from  the  side  of  the  organic  activity,  or  re- 
sponse, there  is  difficulty  of  another  sort  in  adapting  behavior- 
ism to  the  accepted  understanding  of  experience — a  difficulty 
brought  out  more  especially  when  we  turn  to  the  ideal  elements 
in  knowledge.  If  I  open  my  eyes  to  my  surroundings,  an  ob- 
server can  tell  what  I  see,  because  he  is  seeing  the  same  things 
for  himself;  if  I  close  my  eyes,  and  allow  my  thoughts  to  range, 
I  have  at  least  rendered  his  task  much  more  arduous  and  un- 
certain. The  neo-realist  will  reply  that  in  so  far  as  I  can  get  at 
the  incipient  muscular  contractions  which  are  involved  in  think- 
ing,— or,  as  he  would  say,  which  are  thought, — I  am  again  in 
a  position  to  tell  directly  what  is  in  my  neighbor's  mind.  But 
at  least  when  we  pass  thus  from  things  to  words,  the  situa- 
tion takes  a  turn  that  is  not  without  possibilities  of  trouble. 
Articulation  is  to  be  sure  a  form  of  behavior;  though  it  might 
seem  the  natural  thing  to  call  it  a  response  to  an  interlocutor, 
rather  than  to  the  content  of  the  idea.  But  at  any  rate,  from 
the  standpoint  of  an  observer,  the  situation  is  appreciably 
different  in  the  two  cases.  Since  the  observer  has  himself  no 
way  of  seeing  an  ideal  content,  but  envisages  only  the  "activity'^ 
aspect  of  mind,  external  observation  is  no  longer  a  sufficient 
method  for  getting  directly  at  the  inner  life;  "having  an  idea" 
becomes  in  terms  of  its  content  a  quite  different  experience 
from  observing  a  word  reaction,  whereas  when  I  perceive  a 
perception,  the  observing  experience  is  supposed  to  have  the 
same  content  as  the  perception  itself.  In  so  far  as  an  idea 
leads  to  some  future  dealing  with  its  object,  by  awaiting  the 


R.  B.  Perry  445 

issue  an  observer  might  indeed  immediately  perceive  the  idea's 
content.  But  the  perception  of  a  chain  of  physical  processes 
which  end  in  an  object's  presence  after  an  indefinite  lapse  of 
time,  is  still  utterly  unlike  the  immediate  experience  of  ' 'hav- 
ing an  idea";  in  it  the  future  fact  is  evidently  not  present  at  the 
start  as  an  existent  content,  whereas  the  "idea"  does  have  for 
me  a  present  content,  which  more  or  less  adequately  forecasts 
or  represents  the  future  one,  and  to  which  the  biological  process 
open  to  the  observer  bears  descriptively  not  the  slightest  re- 
semblance. 

Accordingly,  to  fit  the  facts,  we  must  enlarge  our  notion 
of  response,  and,  since  any  possible  object  of  knowledge  can 
be  present  "in  idea,"  must  find  a  way  to  interpret  its  relation 
to  response  in  present  rather  than  in  future  terms,  unless  we 
are  prepared  to  reduce  "thought,"  prior  to  its  completion  in 
action,  to  the  bare  muscular  contraction  of  speaking,  which 
every  one  knows  that  really  it  is  not.  Now  English  neo- 
realism,  interpreted  as  the  "awareness"  of  a  Platonic  world 
of  timeless  being,  may  perhaps  compass  this;  but  for  behavior- 
ism it  apparently  is  possible  only  by  abandoning  the  notion  of 
biological  response  in  any  sense  that  gives  it  scientific  value. 
Metaphysically,  Perry  saves  his  theory  from  the  charge  of 
materialism,  with  which  otherwise  it  might  excusably  be  con- 
fused, by  holding  that  the  physical  is  itself  subordinate  to  more 
ultimate  logical  entities.  But  his  whole  theory  of  knowledge 
rests  upon  a  physical  fact,  the  organism;  its  scientific  plausi- 
bility is  dependent  upon  this.  And  the  sense  in  which  a  physical 
body,  in  scientific  terms,  and  without  having  recourse  to  no- 
tions that  leave  the  physical  fact  behind,  can  respond  to  an 
abstract  logical  hypothesis,  or  to  a  comprehensive  ethical  ideal, 
or  to  an  event  in  the  future  or  the  past,  without  any  inter- 
position of  "ideas,"  is  at  least  something  that  cannot  be  taken 
for  granted  as  requiring  no  special  explanation.  An  animal 
may  respond  to  an  abstraction  in  this  sense,  that  what  sets 
off  his  action  is  some  partial  feature  of  an  object  which  he 


446        English  and  American  Philosophy 

observes, — for  example,  a  particular  shape  or  a  particular  shade 
of  color;  there  is  no  great  difficulty  so  long  as  something  real 
is  present  in  the  environment  which  has  this  special  character. 
But  how  does  the  physical  organism  pick  out  of  its  environment 
the  ideal  of  Plato's  republic,  or  the  square  root  of  minus  one? 
Perry  simplifies  his  own  task  by  keeping  usually  within  the 
range  of  situations  where  biology,  as  a  non-metaphysical  science, 
moves;  and  were  we  to  stop  with  materialism,  this  would  be 
legitimate.  But  if  the  metaphysics  of  realism  is  to  be  taken  as 
logical  rather  than  identified  with  physics,  a  new  and  difficult 
set  of  problems  will  need  to  be  faced. 

4.  A  sketch  of  what  the  program  of  reducing  the  imi verse 
to  logical  or  neutral  entities  might  be  like,  is  suggested  by  an- 
other of  the  six  realists,  E.  B.  Holt.  From  such  a  standpoint, 
Being  appears  as  the  ultimate  category,  and  everything  alike 
has  being  of  which  it  is  possible  to  think  at  all.  Philosophy 
attempts  to  give  unity  of  system  to  the  realm  of  being,  by 
means  of  the  property  of  "activity"  which  belongs  to  logical 
propositions,  and  through  which  they  generate  terms;  this  rela- 
tion of  a  generating  proposition  to  the  series  of  terms  which 
satisfy  its  demands  is  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  the  one 
and  the  many.  The  ideal  of  philosophy  would  be  a  single 
rigidly  deductive  system,  where  a  few  logical  propositions,  or 
even  one,  generate  all  the  multitudinous  detail  of  the  world  we 
know.  The  particular  purpose  of  Holt's  book  is  to  apply  this 
ideal  of  method  to  the  concept  of  consciousness  in  particular, 
and  to  show  thereby  the  validity  of  the  "search-light"  theory 
of  behaviorism. 

In  its  actual  carrying  out,  however,  the  method  develops 
certain  limitations.  In  the  first  place,  it  does  not  even  make  a 
pretence  of  deducing  the  particular  facts  of  the  world — the 
rock  on  wlwch  logical  theories  of  reality  have  always  foundered ; 
what  it  is  actually  concerned  with  is  concepts  simply,  and  the 
definition  of  complex  concepts  in  logically  simpler  terms,  each 


E.  B.  Holt  447 

new  state  of  complexity  in  the  world  being  reducible  to  the  same 
neutral  elements  that  appear  in  the  preceding  stage,  and,  in 
the  end,  to  a  few  logical  indefinables.  Thus,  presupposing  that 
we  have  been  successful  in  reaching  the  stage  of  organic  mechan- 
ism, we  need  to  show  that  from  some  character  of  this  we  can 
deduce  just  those  cliaracteristics  that  empirically  we  find  be- 
longing to  what  we  are  acquainted  with  as  consciousness;  and 
this  we  accomplish  through  the  notion  of  selective  response  to 
limited  aspects  of  the — ultimately  neutral — environment.  Even 
in  this  conceptual  sense  the  method  meets  many  difficulties; 
one  notable  difficulty,  for  example,  is  the  case  of  quality.  If 
we  were  to  accept  qualitative  differences  as  they  seem  to  exist 
for  experience,  we  obviously  should  have  something  incapable 
of  being  analyzed  without  remainder  into  the  terms  that  de- 
scribe energetic,  and,  ultimately,  spatial  and  logical  systems; 
and  accordingly  Holt  eliminates  qualitative  natures  from  the 
world,  and  reduces  them  to  the  "density'*  of  physiological 
series. 

But  now  even  supposing  the  work  accorriplished  of  defining 
all  concepts  in  a  few  ultimate  logical  terms,  we  have  still  the 
more  searching  task  of  making  plausible  the  thesis  that  these 
differing  terms,  with  their  including  propositions,  are  all  there 
is  to  the  universe,  and  that  "reality"  and  "existence"  are  them- 
selves nothing  but  special  complications  of  such  logical  entities. 
And  the  more  successful  we  are  in  thus  reducing  reality  to  a 
logical  formula,  the  less  capable  in  a  way  is  this  formula  of 
solving  our  difficulty  as  to  how  an  organism  can  respond  to  ab- 
sent, and  ideal,  and  non-existent  entities,  simply  because  it  has 
itself  no  place  for  actual  organisms, — which  alone  respond  to 
anything, — but  only  for  the  concept  organism,  and  the  concept 
of  response.  But  because  the  physical  can  be  defined  in  logical 
terms,  it  does  not  follow  that  it  can  be  reduced  to  such  logical 
terms  without  remainder,  unless  we  have  already  prejudged 
a  vital  point  in  metaphysics;  for  a  definition  only  pretends  to 


44^        English  and  American  Philosophy 

cover  the  "nature"  of  things,  and  not  to  be  interchangeable 
with  the  things  themselves. 

5.  Two  other  members  of  the  original  group  of  realists  have 
contributed  to  the  recent  literature  of  the  movement,  W.  T. 
Marvin  in  the  form  of  elementary  text  books,  and  E.  G.  Spauld- 
ing  in  a  more  pretentious  volume,  which  contains  perhaps  the 
most  thorough  criticism  yet  attempted  of  rival  philosophies 
from  a  neo-realistic  point  of  view.  Spaulding's  form  of  realism, 
however,  shows  signs  of  development  in  several  directions.  The 
main  thesis  of  the  book  is  still  the  doctrine  of  "external  rela- 
tions" as  applied  to  knowledge,  and  the  need  of  substituting 
for  the  traditional  logical  emphasis  on  substance  and  causality 
the  newer  logic  of  relational  implication;  and  the  fact  that 
for  any  form  of  philosophy  there  is  at  least  one  instance  where 
the  object  of  knowledge  must  be  taken  realistically  as  inde- 
pendent of  its  being  known, — the  state  of  affairs,  namely,  which 
this  philosophy  defends  as  true, — serves  to  justify  the  realistic 
doctrine,  and  to  convict  its  rivals  of  being  self-refuting.  The 
relational  theory  of  consciousness,  however,  including  its  be- 
havioristic  form,  seems  to  be  given  up  by  Spaulding,  in  favor 
of  a  somewhat  obscure  conception  of  consciousness  as  a  "di- 
mension"— a  theory  which  again  assumes  that  because  a  thing 
can  be  defined  as  having  certain  characteristics,  we  have  the 
right  to  stop  with  these  in  stating  what  we  mean  by  its  existence. 
Spaulding's  notion  of  "truth"  as  a  relation  of  correspondence 
between  the  existent  and  the  "subsistent"  is  also  an  innova- 
tion, and  seems  to  be  looking  back  to  a  position  conceived  by 
neo-realists  generally  to  have  been  outgrown.  The  correspond- 
ence is  not  with  the  "mental,"  to  be  sure,  since  the  subsistent 
is  just  as  truly  non-mental  as  the  physical  is.  But  this  avoid- 
ance of  the  older  "dualistic"  realism — necessary  if  we  are  not 
to  give  up  all  that  is  distinctive  in  neo-realistic  claims — is 
effected  only  at  the  expense  of  putting  truth  and  error  wholly 
outside  the  realm  of  belief — a  mental  fact — where  they  are 
ordinarily  taken  as  residing. 


Conclusion  449 

§  5.   Conclusion 

I.  Neo-realism  is  the  latest  of  the  speculative  tendencies  that 
have  arisen  to  the  dignity  of  a  recognized  school,  though 
it  does  not  by  any  means  exhaust  the  philosophical  {>ennuta- 
tions  that  recent  years  have  brought  forth.  In  America,  more 
particularly,  where  the  authority  of  tradition  is  weaker,  and 
a  more  open  mind  is  apt  to  be  shown  to  contemporary  winds 
of  doctrine,  there  are  a  number  of  recent  philosophers  who 
stand  somewhat  apart  from  the  various  competing  systems,  and 
attempt  to  profit  from  them  all  alike.  Thus  J.  E.  Boodin 
calls  his  philosophy  a  pragmatic  realism.  Boodin  finds  five 
irreducible  characters  of  reality — a  "stuff" — being — conceived 
in  the  form  of  active  energy  complexes,  time,  space,  conscious- 
ness, and  form  or  selective  direction.  Consciousness  is  inter- 
preted as  an  "awareness"  which  lights  up  reality  in  spots;  it  is 
not  the  essential  character  of  the  "self,"  which  is  a  group  of 
active  conative  tendencies,  cooperating  as  a  form  of  energy 
with  other  energies  in  the  physical  world.  In  Dewitt  H. 
Parker,  a  closer  approach  is  made  to  neo-realism.  Parker  draws 
a  distinction  between  self,  and  mind.  The  self  is  a  set  of  ac- 
tivities which,  by  coming  into  the  presence  of  a  sensuous  con- 
tent, makes  this  a  portion  of  an  individual  mind;  these  sensa- 
tions, meanwhile,  are  themselves  objective  facts  independent  of 
perceiving,  though  not  independent  of  the  body,  whose  co- 
operation is  called  for  in  their  production.  The  same  content 
may  figure  in  any  number  of  different  minds,  which  thus  join 
in  its  control;  and  we  may  reasonably  interpret  the  natural 
object  in  so  far  as  it  seems  to  exist  when  human  beings  are 
not  perceiving  it,  as  likewise  in  the  form  of  sensations  suffering 
the  control  of  extra-human  activities,  capable  of  being  inter- 
preted after  the  analogy  of  a  self.  There  is  no  direct  contact 
between  one  self  and  another,  comparable  to  the  connection  of 
activities  within  a  self.     But  different  selves  are  indirectly  con- 


45 o        English  and  American  Philosophy 

nected  through  the  sense  elements  which  are  their  common 
termini ;  and  this  overlapping  of  minds  supplies  a  basis  for  their 
communication  and  interaction.  In  D.  C.  Macintosh,  again,  a 
theory  of  the  identical  presence  of  an  independent  reality  in 
perception,  conceived  as  necessary  in  order  to  avoid  agnos- 
ticism, is  combined  with  a  claim  that  certain  qualities  of  the 
real  object,  the  secondary  qualities,  it  does  not  possess  when 
it  is  not  perceived,  but  acquires  through  the  creative  activity  of 
the  psychical  subject.  Here  the  ultimate  interest  is  a  religious 
one,  and  issues  in  a  vindication  of  God  as  an  immediate  object 
of  empirical  experience. 

2.  If  the  historian  of  the  future  is  to  be  in  a  position  to 
find  a  dramatic  tendency  in  the  evolution  of  philosophy,  it  is 
clearly  not  in  the  year  1922  that  his  plot  will  culminate.  The 
almost  feverish  activity  of  the  last  few  decades  is  in  striking 
contrast  to  the  apathy  with  which  the  nineteenth  century- 
opened;  but  the  universe  still  seems  as  far  from  having  come 
to  the  consciousness  of  its  own  rationality  in  the  philosophical, 
as  in  the  political  field.  Only  an  optimist,  or  a  convinced 
partisan,  is  likely  to  find  in  the  discussions  of  the  present 
moment  the  resolution  of  that  uncertainty  and  lack  of  common 
agreement  which  has  so  often  been  used  to  put  the  philosopher 
apologetically  on  the  defensive.  In  spite  of  what  is  perhaps 
a  growing  disposition  on  the  part  of  members  of  one  school  to 
learn  in  matters  of  detail  from  another,  the  philosophical  at- 
mosphere is  still  sharply  controversial  rather  than  coopera- 
tive, and  the  leading  schools  all  diverge  at  the  very  outset  by 
insisting  on  the  adoption  of  a  special,  and  usually  a  more  or 
less  non-natural  standpoint,  before  the  pupil  can  be  instructed 
in  the  one  true  faith.  Occasionally  a  voice  is  raised  against 
the  proprietary  attitude  in  philosophic  doctrine,  in  the  inter- 
ests of  greater  catholicity.  This  is  true,  for  example,  of  a  re- 
cent volume  by  W.  S.  Sheldon.  But  the  particular  solution 
offered,  in  terms  of  the  mutual  interdependence  of  external  and 
internal  relations, — or,  put  more  simply,  in  terms  of  the  need  for 


Conclusion  45 1 

recognizing  the  claims  alike  of  the  persistence  or  integrity  of 
every  actual  aspect  of  experience,  and  of  its  development  under 
the  conditions  imposed  upon  it  by  the  environment — is  some- 
what too  abstract  to  show  the  way  clearly  to  a  reform. 

William  James  has  perhaps  indicated  where  a  start  toward 
agreement  might  be  made;  if  the  philosopher  would  be  more 
frank  in  confessing  to  the  human  interests  which  guide  his 
search  for  truth,  it  might  be  that  these  competing  interests, 
brought  into  the  open,  would  prove  less  obnoxious  to  one  an- 
other than  a  comparison  of  their  outcome  in  terms  of  logic 
merely  would  suggest.  Even  here,  however,  a  twist  might  be 
given  to  the  matter  unduly  pleasing  to  the  sceptic.  Why  not, 
it  might  be  asked,  admit  at  once  that  a  philosophical  system 
is  nothing  but  a  work  of  art,  an  attempt  to  give  some  favorite 
emotional  reaction  a  logical  body  and  expression  such  as  will 
gratify  our  sense  of  speculative  consistency.  Once  recognize 
that  a  philosophy  is  not  the  one  exclusive  truth  about  reality, 
but  the  gratification  of  a  cosmic  mood,  and  it  will  appear  that 
the  rivalry  of  systems  has  no  foundation.  This  seems  to  be 
the  attitude  recommended  in  the  speculative  essays  of  a  recent 
candid  friend,  rather  than  lover  of  philosophy,  L.  P.  Jacks. 
The  true  angle  of  approach  to  philosophy  is  from  the  side  of 
the  universe,  rather  than  of  man  as  a  thinking  animal.  The 
world  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  Sphinx  engaged  in  setting  prob- 
lems for  us  to  solve,  but  as  an  immediately  satisfying  work  of 
art,  in  which  speculative  activities  have  indeed  a  place,  but  only 
along  with  other  forms  of  living.  A  philosophy  which  aims  to 
cover  reality  must  not  forget,  accordingly,  to  find  a  place  for 
itself  also  within  the  universal  scheme;  and  thereby  it  becomes, 
not  an  impersonal  passer  of  judgment  on  the  world,  but  itself 
one  form  among  others  of  the  world's  activities.  In  other 
words,  as  an  expression  of  the  cosmic  whole,  philosophy  is  not 
my  philosophy,  superior  in  truth  to,  and  destined  to  take  the 
place  of,  all  the  rest;  it  is  the  entire  history  of  philosophic 
thinking  as  a  part  of  the  dramatic  output  of  the  universe. 


45^       English  and  American  Philosophy 

But  now  is  such  a  theory  itself  also  only  another  figure  in 
the  universal  drama?  This  can  be  professed  in  words,  but  it 
seems  very  doubtful  whether  in  reality  higher  pretensions  for 
it  can  be  avoided.  And  at  least  the  philosopher  himself  can 
scarcely  afford  to  recognize  that  his  results  are  nothing  but  an 
exercise  in  logic  built  about  a  special  mood,  if  he  is  to  retain 
very  long  his  pleasure  in  philosophizing.  That  this  is  what 
systems  of  philosophy  have  often  been,  it  would  be  difficult  to 
deny  entirely;  and  probably  to  the  end,  since  we  are  dealing 
with  matters  for  which  no  decisive  verification  is  conceivable, 
individual  preferences  will  help  determine  for  each  man  what 
vision  of  reality  will  seem  most  sane  and  reasonable,  and  phi- 
losophers will  never  quite  see  eye  to  eye.  And  of  course  so  long 
as  the  tendency  prevails  to  insist  on  ruling  out  as  meaningless 
problems  that  appeal  to  other  minds,  in  the  interest  of  some 
exclusive  vision,  no  agreement  can  come  about  till  all  phi- 
losophers are  converted  to  a  single  system;  and  no  one  who 
knows  philosophers  can  reasonably  expect  this  to  happen  soon. 
But  if  a  fraction  of  the  effort  once  were  made  to  enter  into  the 
difficulties  and  the  insights  of  other  thinkers  that  now  goes  to 
following  out  the  logical  consequences  of  a  single  insight  and 
defending  it  against  competitors,  philosophers  might  fairly  be 
expected  to  discover  that  logical  agreement,  like  ethical  agree- 
ment, is  less  improbable  than  the  particularism  of  our  first  and 
natural  instincts  might  lead  us  to  suppose;  since  it  is  in  fact 
to  a  narrow  and  exclusive  sense  of  what  is  valuable,  rather  than 
to  rational  considerations,  that  this  philosophic  particularism 
is  most  always  due.  "Systems"  would  probably  suffer  in  the 
process;  but  systems  have  had  their  chance,  and  have  still 
to  show  their  ability  to  cure  the  ills  of  philosophy. 


INDEX  TO  AUTHORS 


Abercrombie,  John,  (1780-1844).  In- 
quiries Concerning  the  Intellectual 
Powers,  1830;  The  Philosophy  of 
the  Moral  Feelings,  1833.    p.  37. 

Adams,  George  P.  Idealism  and  the 
Modern  Age,  1919.  p.  298. 

Adamson,  Robert,  (1852-1902).  On 
the  Philosophy  of  Kant,  1879; 
Fichte,  1881;  The  Development  of 
Modern  Philosophy,  1903;  The 
Development  of  Greek  Philosophy, 
1908;  A  Short  History  of  Logic, 
1911.  pp.  297,  357. 

Alcott,  Amos  Bronson,  (1799-1888). 
p.  214. 

Alexander,  Samuel.  Moral  Order  and 
Progress,  1889;  Locke,  1908;  Space 
Time,  and  Deity,  1920.  pp.  194, 
421. 

Allen,  Grant  (1848-1899).  Physio- 
logical Aesthetics,  1877;  The  Col- 
our Sense,  1879;  Force  and  En- 
ergy, 1888;  The  Evolution  of  the 
Idea  of  God,  1897.  P-  184. 

Ames,  Edward  Scribner.  Psychology 
of  the  Religious  Experience,  1910. 
p.  407. 

Argyle,  Eighth  Duke  of,  (1823-1900). 
The  Reign  of  Law,  1867;  Primeval 
Man,  1869;  The  Unity  of  Nature, 
1884;  The  Philosophy  of  Belief, 
1896.  p.  200. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  (1822-1888).  Cul- 
ture and  Anarchy,  1869;  St.  Paul 
and  Protestantism,  1870;  Litera- 
ture and  Dogma,  1873;  God  and 
the  Bible,  1875.  p.  125. 

Arnold,  Thomas,  (i 795-1842).    p.  97. 

Atkinson,  Henry  G.  p.  129. 

Austin,  John,  (1790-1859),  The 
Province  of  Jurisprudence  Deter- 
mined, 1832 ;  Lectures  on  Juris- 
prudence, 1863.  p.  91. 


Bailey,  Samuel,  (1791-1870).  Essay 
on  the  Formation  and  Publication 
of  Opinions,  182 1;  Essays  on  the 
Pursuit  of  Truth  and  on  the  Prog- 
ress of  Knowledge,  1829;  Review 
of  Berkeley's  Theory  of  Vision, 
1842;  Theory  of  Reasoning,  1851; 
Letters  on  the  Philosophy  of  the 
Human  Mind,  1855,  1858,  1863. 
p.  37- 

Baillie,  James  B.  The  Origin  and 
Signij&cance  of  Hegel's  Logic,  1901; 
An  Outline  of  the  Idealistic  Con- 
struction of  Experience,  1906; 
Studies  in  Human  Nature,  192 1, 
p.  297. 

Bain,  Alexander,  (1818-1903).  The 
Senses  and  the  Intellect,  1855,  (4th 
ed.  1894) ;  The  Emotions  and  the 
Will,  18S9,  (4th  ed.  1899) ;  Mental 
and  Moral  Science,  1868;  Logic, 
Deductive  and  Inductive,  1870; 
Mind  and  Body,  1873;  Practical 
Essays,  1884;  Dissertations  on 
Leading  Philosophical  Topics,  1903; 
Autobiography,   1904.  p.  87. 

Baldwin,  James  Mark.  Handbook  of 
Psychology,  1890-91;  Mental  De- 
velopment in  the  Child  and  the 
Race,  189S;  Social  and  Ethical  In- 
terpretations in  Mental  Develop- 
ment, 1897;  Dictionary  of  Phi- 
losophy and  Psychology,  1901-05; 
Fragments  in  Philosophy  and  Sci- 
ence, 1902 ;  Development  and  Evo- 
lution, 1902;  Thought  and  Things, 
1906-11;  Darwin  and  the  Humani- 
ties, 1909;  The  Individual  and  So- 
ciety, 191 1 ;  History  of  Psychology, 
1 913;  Genetic  Theory  of  Reality, 
1915.  p.  409. 

Balfour,  Arthur  James.  A  Defence 
of  Philosophic  Doubt,   1879;   The 


453 


454 


Index 


Foundations  of  Belief,  1895 ;  Theism 
and  Humanism,  191S;  Essays  Spec- 
ulative and  Political,  1920.  p.  320. 

Ballantyne,  John,  (1778-1830).  An 
Examination  of  the  Human  Mind, 
1828.  p.  37. 

Barratt,  Alfred,  (1844-1881).  Phy- 
sical Ethics,  1869;  Physical  Met- 
empirics,  1883.  pp.  194,  326. 

Bawden,  Henry  Heath.  The  Prin- 
ciples of  Pragmatism,  1910.  p.  407. 

Bax,  Ernest  Beifort.  The  Problem 
of  Reality,  1892;  The  Roots  of 
Reality,  1907;  The  Real,  the  Ra- 
tional and  the  Alogical,  1921.  p. 
298. 

Bentham,  Jeremy,  (1748-1832).  A 
Fragment  on  Government,  1776; 
An  Introduction  to  the  Principles 
of  Morals  and  Legislation,  1789, 
(2nd  ed.  1823) ;  A  Table  of  the 
Springs  of  Action,  1815;  The  Anal- 
ysis of  the  Influence  of  Natural 
Religion  Upon  the  Temporal  Hap- 
piness of  Mankind,  1822;  Book  of 
Fallacies,  1824;  The  Rationale  of 
Punishment,  1830;  Deontology  or 
Science  of  Morality,  1834;  Works, 
1838-43.     pp.  I,  50,  71,  73,  75,  92. 

Boodin,  John  Elof.  Trut-h  and  Real- 
ity, 191 1 ;  A  Realistic  Universe, 
1916.  p.  449. 

Bosanquet,  Bernard.  Logic  as  the 
Science  of  Knowledge  (in-  Essays 
in  Philosophical  Criticism),  1883; 
Knowledge  and  Reality,  1885; 
Logic,  1888,  (2nd  ed.  1911) ;  Es- 
says and  Addresses,  1889;  History 
of  Aesthetic,  1892 ;  The  Civiliza- 
tion of  Christendom,  1893;  The 
Essentials  of  Logic,  1895;  The 
Psychology  of  the  Moral  Self, 
1897;  The  Philosophical  Theory  of 
the  State,  1899,  (3rd  ed.  1920) ; 
The  Principle  of  Individuality  and 
Value,  1 91 2;  The  Value  and  Des- 
tiny of  the  Individual,  1913;  The 
Distinction  Between  Mind  and  Its 
Objects,  1913;  Three  Lectures  on 
Aesthetic,  191 5;  Social  and  Inter- 
national Ideals,  1917;  Some  Sug- 
gestions in  Ethics,  1918;   Implica- 


tion and  Linear  Inference,  1920; 
What  Religion  is,  1920;  The  Meet- 
ing of  Extremes  in  Contemporary 
Philosophy,  192 1.  pp.  264,  286,  298. 

Bowne,  Borden  P.,  (1847-1910).  Phi- 
losophy of  Herbert  Spencer,  1874; 
Studies  in  Theism,  1879;  Meta- 
physics, 1882,  (2nd  ed.  1898) ;  In- 
troduction to  Psychological  Theory, 
1886;  Philosophy  of  Theism,  1887; 
Principles  of  Ethics,  1892 ;  Theory 
of  Thought  and  Knowledge,  1897; 
Personalism,  1908;  Kant  and  Spen- 
cer, 1912.  p.  324. 

Bradley,  Francis  Herbert.  Ethical 
Studies,  1876;  Mr.  Sidgwick's  He- 
donism, 1877 ;  The  Principles  of 
Logic,  1883;  Appearance  and  Real- 
ity, 1893,  (2nd  ed.  1897) ;  Essays 
on  Truth  and  Reality,  1914.  pp. 
250,  269,  299. 

Bray,  Charles,  (1811-1884).  Philoso- 
phy of  Necessity,  1841,  (2nd  ed. 
1861).   p.    129. 

Bridges,  John  Henry,  (1832-1906). 
Comte's  General  View  of  Positiv- 
ism, 1865;  The  Unity  of  Comte's 
Life  and  Doctrine,  1866,  1911;  Five 
Discourses  on  Positive  Religion, 
1882;  Essays  and  Addresses,  1907; 
Illustrations  of  Positivism,  1907. 
p.    191. 

Broad,  Charles  Dunbar.  Perception, 
Physics,  and  Reality,  1914.  pp.  342, 
428. 

Brown,  Thomas,  (i 778-1820).  Ob- 
servations on  the  Zoonomia  of 
Erasmus  Darwin,  1798;  Observa- 
tions on  the  Nature  and  Tendency 
of  the  Doctrine  of  Mr.  Hume  con- 
cerning the  Relation  of  Cause  and 
Effect,  1805,  (3rd  ed.,  entitled  In- 
quiry into  the  Relation  of  Cause 
and  Effect,  181 7) ;  Lectures  on  the 
Philosophy  of  the  Human  Mind, 
1820.  pp.  13,  20,  22,  23,  24,  37. 

Browning,  Robert,  (1812-1889).  p. 
202. 

Buckle,  Henry  Thomas,  (1821-1862). 
History  of  Civilization  in  England, 
1857,  1861;  Miscellanies  and  Post- 
humous Works,  1872.  p.   130. 


Index 


455 


Burke,  Edmund,   (1729-1797).  p.  i. 

Butler,  Samuel,  (1835-1902),  Life 
and  Habit,  1877;  Evolution  Old 
and  New,  1879;  God  the  Known 
and  God  the  Unknown,  1879;  Un- 
conscious Memory,  1880;  Luck  or 
Cunning,  1886.  p.  326. 

Caird,  Edward,  (1835-1908).  A  Crit- 
ical Account  of  the  Philosophy  of 
Kant,  1877;  Hegel,  1883;  Social 
Philosophy  and  Religion  of  Comte, 
1885;  The  Critical  Philosophy  of 
Immanuel  Kant,  1889;  Essays  on 
Literature  and  Philosophy,  1892; 
The  Evolution  of  Religion,  1893; 
The  Evolution  of  Theology  in  the 
Greek  Philosophers,  1904;  Lay 
Sermons  and  Addresses,  1907.  p. 
248. 

Caird,  John,  (1820-1898).  An  In- 
troduction to  the  Philosophy  of 
Religion,  1880;  Spinoza,  1888.  p. 
248. 

Calderwood,  Henry,  (1830-1897). 
The  Philosophy  of  the  Infinite, 
1854,  (2nd  ed.  1861);  Handbook 
of  Moral  Philosophy,  1872,  (14th 
ed.  1888) ;  The  Relations  of  Mind 
and  Brain,  1877,  (3rd  ed.  1892) ; 
The  Relations  of  Science  and  Re- 
ligion, 1881;  Evolution  and  Man's 
Place  in  Nature,  1893;  David 
Hume,  1898.  p.  38. 

Calkin,  Mary  Whiton.  Introduction 
to  Psychology,  1901 ;  The  Persist- 
ent Problems  of  Philosophy,  1907, 
(4th  ed.  191 7) ;  A  First  Book  in 
Psychology,  1909;  The  Good  Man 
and  the  Good,  1918.  p.  298. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  (i  795-1881).  p. 
208, 

Carpenter,  William  Benjamin,  (1813- 
1885).  The  Principles  of  General 
and  Comparative  Physiology,  1839, 
(5th  ed.  1855) ;  Principles  of  Men- 
tal Physiology,  1874;  Nature  and 
Man,  1888.  p.  197. 

Carr,  Herbert  Wildon.  The  Philoso- 
phy of  Change,  1914;  The  Phi- 
losophy of  Benedetto  Croce,  191 7; 
The  General  Principle  of  Relativity 


in  its  Philosophical  and  Historical 
Aspect,  1920.  p.  407. 

Case,  Thomas.  Physical  Realism, 
1888.  p.  341. 

Chalmers,  Thomas,  (1780-1847).  The 
Christian  and  Civic  Economy  of 
Large  Towns,  1821-6;  On  Politi- 
cal Economy  in  connection  with 
the  Moral  State  and  Moral  Pros- 
pects of  Society,  1832;  The  Adap- 
tation of  External  Nature  to  the 
Moral  and  Intellectual  Constitu- 
tion of  Man,  1834;  Sketches  of 
Moral  and  Mental  Philosophy, 
1836;  Natural  Theology,  1836.  p. 
37. 

Chambers,  Robert,  (1802-1871). 
Vestiges  of  the  Natural  History  of 
Creation,  1844.  p.  131. 

Channing,  William  Henry,  (1810- 
1884).  p.   125. 

Clifford,  William  Kingdon,  (1845- 
1879).  Seeing  and  Thinking,  1879; 
Lectures  and  Essays,  1879;  The 
Common  Sense  of  the  Exact  Sci- 
ence, 1885.  pp.  186,  326,  329. 

Cobbe,  Frances  Power,  (1822-1904). 
The  Theory  of  Intuitive  Morals, 
1855;  Broken  Lights,  1864;  Dar- 
winism in  Morals,  1872;  The 
Hopes  of  the  Human  Race,  1874; 
The  Scientific  Spirit  of  the  Age, 
1888;  Life,  by  Herself,  1894.  p. 
125. 

Coffey,  Peter.  The  Science  of  Logic, 
1912;  Ontology,  1914;  Epistemol- 
ogy,   1917.  p.  341. 

Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  (1772- 
1834).  The  Friend,  1809-10;  Bi- 
ographia  Literaria,  181 7;  Aids  to 
Reflection,  1825 ;  On  the  Consti- 
tution of  Church  and  State,  1830; 
Confessions  of  an  Inquiring  Spirit, 
1840;  Essay  on  Method,  1845.  p. 
III. 

Combe,  George,  (1788-1858).  Es- 
says on  Phrenology,  1819;  Elements 
of  Phrenology,  1824;  The  Constitu- 
tion of  Man  considered  in  rela- 
tion to  External  Objects,  1828,  (8th 
ed.  1847) ;  Lectures  on  Moral  Phi- 
losophy,   1840;    On    the    Relation 


4S6 


Index 


between  Religion  and  Science,  1857. 
p.  88. 

Congreve,  Richard,  (1818-1899). 
The  New  Religion  in  its  Attitude  to 
the  Old,  1859;  Essays  Political, 
Social  and  Religious,  18 74- 1900; 
Human  Catholicism,  1876,  1877; 
Religion  of  Humanity,  1878,  1879, 
1881,  1882,  p.  190. 

Courtney,  William  Leonard.  The 
Metaphysics  of  John  Stuart  Mill, 
1879;  Studies  in  Philosophy,  1882; 
Constructive  Ethics,  1886;  Life  of 
J.  S.  Mill,   1889.  p.   297. 

Creative  Intelligence.  By  John 
Dewey,  Addison  W.  Moore,George 
H.  Mead,  Boyd  H.  Bode,  Henry 
W.  Stuart,  James  H.  Tufts,  Hor- 
ace M.  Kallen.    191 7.    p.  407. 

Creighton,  James  Edwin.  An  Intro- 
ductory Logic,  1898,  (4th  ed. 
1920).  p.  298. 

Darwm,  Charles  R.,  (1809-1882). 
Origin  of  Species,  1859,  (6th  ed. 
1872) ;  Descent  of  Man,  1871,  (2nd 
ed.  1874).  p.  131. 

Dewey,  John.  Psychology,  1887; 
Leibniz'  New  Essays  Concerning 
the  Human  Understanding,  1888; 
Outline  of  a  Critical  Theory  of 
Ethics,  1891 ;  The  School  and  So- 
ciety, 1899;  Studies  in  Logical  The- 
ory, 1903;  Ethics  (with  J.  H. 
Tufts),  1908;  How  We  Think, 
1 9 10;  The  Influence  of  Darwin  on 
Philosophy,  1910;  German  Philoso- 
phy and  Politics,  191S;  Essays  in 
Experimental  Logic,  1916;  De- 
mocracy and  Education,  1916; 
The  Need  for  a  Recovery  of  Phi- 
losophy (in  Creative  Intelligence), 
191 7;  Reconstruction  in  Philoso- 
phy, 1920;  Human  Nature  and 
Conduct,  1922.  pp.  365,  388. 

Draper,  John  William,  (1811-1882). 
History  of  the  Intellectual  Develop- 
ment of  Europe,  1862.  p.  131. 

Drummond,  Henry,  (1851-1897). 
Natural  Law  in  the  Spiritual 
World,  1883;  Ascent  of  Man, 
1894.  p.  200. 


Eliot,  George,  (1819-1880).  p.  190. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  (1803-1882). 
pp.  213,  214. 

Essays  and  Reviews.  By  Frederick 
Temple,  Rowland  Williams,  Baden 
Powell,  H.  B.  Wilson,  C.  W.  Good- 
win, Mark  Pattison,  Benjamin 
Jowett.  i860,  p.  124. 

Essays  in  Critical  Realism.  By  Dur- 
ant  Drake,  Arthur  O.  Lovejoy, 
James  B.  Pratt,  Arthur  K.  Rogers, 
George  Santayana,  Roy  Wood  Sel- 
lers, Charles  A.  Strong.  1920.  p. 
340- 

Fawcett,  Edward  Douglas.  The  Rid- 
dle of  the  Universe,  1893;  The  In- 
dividual and  Reality,  1909;  The 
World  as  Imagination,  191 6;  Di- 
vine Imagining,  192 1.  p.  407. 

Ferrier,  James  Frederick,  (1808- 
1864).  The  Institutes  of  Meta- 
physic,  1854;  Scottish  Philosophy, 
1856;  Lectures  on  Greek  Philoso- 
phy and  other  Philosophical  Re- 
mains, 1866.  pp.  40,  42. 

Fiske,  John,  (1842-1901).  Outlines 
of  Cosmic  Philosophy,  1874;  The 
Unseen  World,  1876;  Darwinism 
and  other  Essays,  1879;  The  Des- 
tiny of  Man,  1884;  The  Idea  of 
God,  1885;  Through  Nature  to 
God,  1899;  Life  Everlasting,  1901. 
p.  198. 

Flint,  Robert,  (1838-1901).  The  Phi- 
losophy of  History  in  France  and 
Germany,  1874,  (new  ed,  1893)  I 
Theism,  1877,  (loth  ed.  1902) ; 
Anti-Theistic  Theories,  1879;  Vico, 
1884;  Agnosticism,  1903;  Philoso- 
phy as  Scientia  Scientiarum,  1904. 
p.  40. 

Eraser,  Alexander  Campbell,  (1819- 
1914).  Essays  in  Philosophy, 
1856;  Rational  Philosophy  in  His- 
tory and  in  System,  1858;  The 
Works  of  George  Berkeley  edited, 
1871,  (new  ed,  1901) ;  Selections 
from  Berkeley,  1874,  (6th  ed. 
1910) ;  Berkeley,  1881;  Locke, 
1890;  An  Essay  Concerning  Human 
Understanding  by  John  Locke,  ed- 


Index 


457 


ited,  1894;  The  Philosophy  of  The- 
ism, 189S-6;  Thomas  Reid,  1898; 
Biographia  Philosophica,  1904 1 
Berkeley  and  Spiritual  Realism, 
1908.   p.   319. 

Froude,  James  Anthony,  (1818- 
1894).  The  Nemesis  of  Faith, 
1849.  p.  125. 

Froude,  Richard  Hurrell,  (1803- 
1836).     Remains,  1837.  p.  100. 

Fuller,  Margaret,  (1810-1850).  p. 
214. 

Fullerton,  George  Stuart.  The  Con- 
ception of  the  Infinite,  1887;  A 
Plain  Argument  for  God,  1889; 
The  Philosophy  of  Spinoza,  1891, 
(2nd  ed.  1894) ;  A  System  of  Met- 
aphysics, 1904;  Introduction  to 
Philosophy,  1906;  The  World  We 
Live  In,  1912.  p.  343. 

Galloway,  George.  The  Principles 
of  Religious  Development,  1909; 
The  Philosophy  of  Religion,  1914. 

p.  324. 

Gibson,  William  Ralph  Boyce.  The 
Problem  of  Freedom  in  Its  Re- 
lation to  Psychology  (in  Personal 
Idealism),  1902;  Rudolph  Eucken's 
Philosophy  of  Life,  1906,  (3rd  ed. 
1912) ;  The  Problem  of  Logic,  1908; 
God  With  Us,  1909.  p.  323. 

Godwin,  William.,   (1756-1836).  p.  i. 

Green,  Thomas  Hill,  (1836-1882). 
Introduction  to  Edition  of  Hume's 
Treatise,  1874-5;  Prolegomena  to 
Ethics,  1883;  Works,  1885-8.  pp. 
220,  250,  323. 

Grote,  George,  (i 794-1871).  Plato 
and  other  Companions  of  Socra- 
tes, 1865-70;  Review  of  the  work 
entitled  Examination  of  Sir  Wil- 
liam Hamilton's  Philosophy, 
1868;  Aristotle,  1872;  Minor 
Works,  1873;  Fragments  on  Ethi- 
cal Subjects,  1876.  p.  86. 

Grote,  John,  (1813-1866).  Explora- 
tio  Philosophica,  Pt.  I,  1865,  Pt. 
II,  1900;  An  Examination  of  the 
Utilitarian  Philosophy,  1870;  A 
Treatise  on  the  Moral  Ideals,  1876. 
p.  323. 


Haldane,  Richard  Burdon.  The  Re- 
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Hamilton,  Sir  William,  (i 788-1856). 
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1852;  Lectures  on  Metaphysics 
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38,  39,  43,  138. 

Hampden,  Renn  Dickson,  (1793- 
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Harper,  Thomas  N.,  (1821-1893). 
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Harrison,  Frederic.  Meaning  of  His- 
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Memories  and  Thoughts,  1906; 
Creed  of  a  Layman,  1907;  Phi- 
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Realities  and  Ideals,  1908;  Auto- 
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Herschel,  Sir  John  F.  W.,  (1792- 
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458 


Index 


of  Thinking  and  Other  Essays, 
1879;  Philosophy  and  Religion, 
1 881;  The  Law-breaker  and  the 
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Hobhouse,  Leonard  Trelawney.  The 
Theory  of  Knowledge,  1896;  Mind 
in  Evolution,  1901,  (2nd  ed.  191S) ; 
Morals  in  Evolution,  1906,  (2nd 
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Hocking,  WilUam  Ernest.  The 
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Hodgson,  Shadworth  Hollway,  (1832- 
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The  Theory  of  Practice,  1870;  The 
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The  Metaphysic  of  Experience, 
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Hoeml6,  R.  F.  Alfred.  Studies  in 
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Holt,  Edward  Bissell.  The  Place  of 
Illusory  Experience  in  a  Realistic 
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1912 ;  The  Concept  of  Conscious- 
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Howison,  George  H.,  (1834-1916). 
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P-  303. 
Huxley,  Thomas  Henry,  (1825- 
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1863;  Lay  Sermons,  Addresses  and 
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Some  Controverted  Questions, 
1892;  Evolution  and  Ethics,  1893; 
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Jacks,  Lawrence  P.  The  Alchemy  of 
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The  Will  to  Believe,  1897;  Human 
Immortality,  1898;  Talks  on  Psy- 
chology to  Teachers,  1899;  Varie- 
ties of  Religious  Experience,  1902; 
Pragmatism,  1907;  A  Pluralistic 
Universe,  1909;  The  Meaning  of 
Truth,  1909;  Some  Problems  of 
Philosophy,  1911;  Memories  and 
Studies,  1 911;  Essays  in  Radical 
Empiricism,  1912 ;  Essays  and  Re- 
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Jeffrey,  Francis,  (1773-1850).  p. 
32. 

Jevons,  William  Stanley,  (1835- 
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Joachim,  Harold  H.  A  Study  of 
the  Ethics  of  Spinoza,  1901 ;  The 
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Joad,  Cyril  E.  M.  Essays  in  Com- 
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Jones,  Henry.  The  Social  Organism 
(in  Essays  in  Philosophical  Criti- 
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losophical and  Religious  Teacher, 
1891 ;  The  Philosophy  of  Lotze., 
1895;  Idealism  as  a  Practical 
Creed,  1909;  The  Working  Faith  of 
the  Social  Reformer,  1910;  The 
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297. 
Jowett,  Benjamin,    (1817-1893).     St. 

Paul's    Epistles    to    the    Thessalo- 

nians,  Galatians  and  Romans,  1855; 
On    the    Interpretation    of    Scripture 

(in    Essays    and    Reviews),    i860; 

Translation    of    Plato's    Dialogues, 

1871,  (3rd  ed.  1892).  pp.  122,  124. 
Joyce,  Howard.    Principles  of  Logic, 

1908,   (2nd  ed.  1916).  p.  341. 

Kallen,  Horace  Meyer.  William 
James  and  Henri  Bergson,  1914; 
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Art,  and  Religion  (in  Creative  In- 
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Keble,  John,   (i 792-1866).  p.  100. 


Index 


459 


Kidd,  Benjamin.  Social  Evolution, 
1894;  Principles  of  Western  Civ- 
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Kingsley,     Charles,     (1819-1875).    p. 


Ladd,  George  Trumbull,  (1822-1921). 
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troduction to  Philosophy,  1890; 
Psychology,  1894;  Philosophy  of 
Mind,  1895;  Philosophy  of  Knowl- 
edge, 1897;  Outlines  of  Descrip- 
tive Psychology,  1898;  A  Theory 
of  Reality,  1899;  Philosophy  of 
Conduct,  1902 ;  Philosophy  of  Re- 
ligion, 1905;  Knowledge,  Life  and 
Reality,  1909;  What  Can  I  Know, 
1914;  What  May  I  Hope,  1915; 
yVhat  Ought  I  to  Do,  1915;  What 
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Laird,  John.  Problems  of  the  Self, 
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Laurie,  Simon  Somerville,  (1829- 
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1884,  (new     ed.     1889) ;     Ethica, 

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Le  Conte,  Joseph,  (1823-1901).  Re- 
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The  Conception  of  God  (with 
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Lewes,  George  Henry,  (1817-1878). 
The  Biographical  History  of  Phi- 
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Comte's  Philosophy  of  the  Positive 
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Problems  of  Life  and  Mind,  1874- 
5,  1877,  1879-  p.  167. 

Lindsay,  James.  Recent  Advances  in 
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1897;  Studies  in  European  Philoso- 
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Lowndes,  Richard,  (?).  Introduc- 
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Macaulay,  Thomas  B.,  (1800-1859). 
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An  Examination  of  Mr.  J.  S. 
Mill's  Philosophy,  1866;  Philosoph- 
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cursive Thought,  1870;  Christianity 
and  Positivism,  1871;  The  Scottish 
Philosophy,  1875;  The  Develop- 
ment Hypothesis:  Is  it  Sufficient, 
1876;  The  Emotions,  1880;  De- 
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It  Cannot  Do,  1884;  Psychology, 
1886,  1887;  Realistic  Philosophy 
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McDougall,  William.  An  Introduc- 
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Mackenzie,  John  Stuart.  An  Intro- 
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1890;  A  Manual  of  Ethics,  1893, 
(4th  ed.  1 901);  Outlines  of  Meta- 
physics, 1902;  Lectures  on  Hu- 
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p.   297. 

Macintosh,  Douglas  Clyde.  The 
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Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  (i 765-1832). 
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McTaggart,  John  McTaggart  Ellis. 
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1896;  Studies  in  Hegelian  Cosmo- 
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460 


Index 


Hegel's  Logic,  1910;  The  Nature 
of  Existence,  1921.  p.  300. 

Maher,  Michael,  Psychology,  1891, 
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Mallock,  William  Hurrell.  The  New 
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3803) ;  Principles  of  Political 
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Mansel,  Henry  Longueville,  (1820- 
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Martineau,  Harriet,  (1802-1876). 
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Martineau,  James,  (1805-1900).  The 
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1836;  Essays  Philosophical  and 
Theological,  1868;  Religion  as  Af- 
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Ideal  Substitutes  for  God  Consid- 
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Ethics  and  Religion,  1881;  A 
Study  of  Spinoza,  1882;  Types  of 
Ethical  Theory,  1885;  A  Study  of 
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Marvin,  Walter  T.  Introduction  to 
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Maudsley,  Henry.  Mind  and  Body, 
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Maurice,  John  Frederick  Denison, 
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1853;  The  Conscience,  1868;  Lec- 
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Moral  and  Metaphysical  Philoso- 
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Meredith,  George,  (1828-1909).  p. 
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Mill,  James,  (i  773-1836).  Ele- 
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sertations and  Discussions,  1859, 
1867,  1875;  Considerations  on  Rep- 
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of  Sir  William  Hamilton's  Philoso- 
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Positivism,  1865;  The  Works  of 
James  Mill  edited,  1869;  On  the 
Subjection  of  Women,  1869;  Auto- 
biography, 1873 ;  Three  Essays  on 
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37,  63,  64,  88,  128,  190. 

Mivart,  St.  George  Jackson,  (1827- 
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son,  1889;   Essays  and   Criticisms, 


Index 


461 


1892 ;  The  Helpful  Science,  1895 ; 
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Montague,  William  Pepperrell.  A 
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Moore,  Addison  Webster.  The  Func- 
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Aspects  of  Purpose  (in  Studies  in 
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462 


Index 


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Essays  on  the  Intellectual  Powers 
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Richardson,  C.  A.  Spiritual  Pluralism 
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Rickaby,  John.  The  First  Principles 
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1898;  The  World  and  the  Individ- 
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Santayana,  George.  The  Sense  of 
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Schiller,  Ferdinand  Canning  Scott. 
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Studies  in  Humanism,  1907,  (2nd 
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Sedgwick,  Adam,  (1785-1873).  Dis- 
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Sellers,  Roy  Wood.  Critical  Realism, 
1916;  The  Essentials  of  Philosophy, 
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Seth  Pringle-Pattison,  Andrew.  Phi- 
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tish Philosophy,  1885;  Hegelian- 
ism  and  PersonaUty,  1887;  Man's 
Place   in   the   Cosmos,   1897,    (2nd 


ed.  1907) ;  The  Philosophical  Radi- 
cals, 1907;  The  Idea  of  God  in  the 
Light  of  Modern  Philosophy,  1917, 
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Sheldon,  Wilmon  Henry.  The  Strife 
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Sidgwick,  Henry,  (1838-1899).  The 
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Scope  and  Relations,  1902;  Lec- 
tures on  the  Ethics  of  Green,  Spen- 
cer, and  Martineau,  1902;  The 
Philosophy  of  Kant,  1905.  pp.  93, 

341. 

Simcox,  Edith,  (1844-?).  Natural 
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Smith,  Sydney,  (1771-1845).  p.  33. 

Sorley,  William  Ritchie.  The  His- 
torical Method  (in  Essays  in  Philo- 
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cent Tendencies  in  Ethics,  1904; 
Moral  Values  and  the  Idea  of  God, 
1 91 8;  A  History  of  English  Phi- 
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Spaulding,  Edward  Gleason.  A  De- 
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Spencer,  Herbert,  (1820-1903).  So- 
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Psychology,  1855,  (new  ed.,  2 
vols.,  1870-2,  sth  ed.  1890) ;  Es- 
says, 1858-1874,  (new  ed.  Vol  I, 
1891);  Education,  1861 ;  First 
Principles,  1862,  (6th  ed.  1899), 
Principles  of  Biology,  1864-7,  (new 
ed.  1898) ;  The  Classification  of 
the  Sciences,  1864;  The  Study  of 
Sociology,  1872;  Principles  of  So- 
ciology, 1876-96;  Principles  of 
Ethics,  1879-93;  The  Man  vs.  the 
State,  1884;  The  Factors  of  Or- 
ganic Evolution,  1887;  The  In- 
adequacy    of     Natural     Selection, 


464 


Index 


1893;  A  Rejoinder  to  Professor 
Weismann,  1893  >  Weismannism 
Once  More,  1894;  Various  Frag- 
ments, 1897,  (enlarged  ed.  1900)  ; 
Facts  and  Comments,  19^2 ;  Auto- 
biography, 1904.  p.   135. 

Stephen,  Sir  James  Fitzjames,  (1829- 
1894).  Liberty,  Equality  and  Fra- 
ternity, 1873;  Horae  Sabbaticae, 
1892.  pp.   91,  92. 

Stephen,  Leslie,  (1832-1904).  His- 
tory of  English  Thought  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  1876,  (3rd  ed. 
1902) ;  The  Science  of  Ethics, 
1882;  An  Agnostic's  Apology, 
1893 ;  Social  Rights  and  Duties, 
1896;  The  English  Utilitarians, 
1900.  pp.  184,  194. 

Stewart,  Dugald,  (1753-1828).  Ele- 
ments of  the  Philosophy  of  the  Hu- 
man Mind,  1792,  1814,  1827; 
Outlines  of  Moral  Philosophy, 
1793;  Philosophical  Essays,  18 10; 
Memoirs  of  Adam  Smith,  Wm, 
Robertson,  and  Thomas  Reid, 
181 1 ;  A  General  View  of  the  Pro- 
gress of  Metaphysical,  Ethical,  and 
Political  Philosophy  Since  the  Re- 
vival of  Letters,  (Encycl.  Brit. 
Supplementary  Dissertation),  1815, 
182 1 ;  The  Philosophy  of  the  Ac- 
tive and  Moral  Powers,  1828; 
Works  ed.  by  Sir  Wm.  Hamilton, 
1854-8-  pp.  7,  IS,  29. 

Stirling,  James  Hutchison,  (1820- 
1909).  The  Secret  of  Hegel,  1865, 
(new  ed.  1898) ;  Sir  William  Hamil- 
ton, 1865;  As  Regards  Protoplasm, 
1869,  (new  ed.  1872) ;  Textbook  to 
Kant,  1881 ;  Philosophy  and  The- 
ology, 1890;  What  Is  Thought, 
1900;  The  Categories,  1903.  p.  220. 

Stout,  George  Frederick.  Analytic 
Psychology,  1896;  A  Manual  of 
Psychology,  1899,  (3rd  ed.  1913) ; 
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The  Groundwork  of  Psychology, 
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Strong,  Charles  Augustus.  Why  the 
Mind  has  a  Body,  1903 ;  The 
Origin  of  Consciousness,  1918;  On 
the  Nature  of  the  Datum  (in  Es- 


says in  Critical  Realism),  1920.  pp. 
329,  335,  340. 

Studies  in  Logical  Theory.  By 
John  Dewey,  Helen  B.  Thompson, 
S.  F.  McLennan,  M.  L.  Ashley,  W. 
C.  Gore,  W.  A.  Heidel,  H.  W. 
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Sturt,  Henry  Cecil.  Art  and  Per- 
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Taylor,  Alfred  Edward.  The  Prob- 
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Taylor,  Isaac,  (1787-1865).  The 
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1836;  The  Natural  History  of 
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Tennyson,  Alfred,  (1809-1892).  p. 
317. 

Tyndall,  John,  (1820-1893).  Frag- 
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Veitch,  John,  (1829-1894).  Memoir 
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Walker,  Lester  J.  Theories  of 
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Wallace,  Alfred  Russell,  (1823-1913). 
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Wallace,  WilUam,  (1844-1897).  The 
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Ward,  James.  Psychology  (in  En- 
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Index 


465 


turalism  and  Agnosticism,  1899, 
(4th  ed.  1915) ;  The  Realm  of 
Ends,  1911 ;  Psychological  Prin- 
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Ward,  William  George,  (1812-1882). 
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Essays  on  the  Philosophy  of  The- 
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Watson,  John.  Kant  and  His  Eng- 
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Transcendental  Idealism,  1882 ; 
Comte,  Mill  and  Spencer,  1895; 
Hedonistic  Theories  from  Aristip- 
pus  to  Spencer,  1895 ;  Christianity 
and  Idealism,  1897;  An  Outline  of 
Philosophy,  (the  2nd  ed.  of  Comte, 
Mill  and  Spencer),  1898;  The  Phi- 
losophical Basis  of  Religion,  1907; 
The  Philosophy  of  Kant  Ex- 
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Webb,  Clement  C.  J.  Problems  in 
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191 8;  Divine  Personality  and  Hu- 
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Wells,  Herbert  George.  First  and 
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Whately,  Richard,  (1787-1863).  His- 
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Whewell,  William,  (1794-1866).  His- 
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White,  Joseph  Blanco,  (1775-1841). 
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Wodehouse,  Helen.  The  Presenta- 
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Wordsworth,  William,  (1770-1850). 
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Utilitarianism  and  Naturalism:  Albee, 
A  History  of  English  Utilitarianism ; 
Balfour,  A  Defense  of  Philosophic 
Doubt,  The  Foundations  of  Belief; 
Bowne,  The  Philosophy  of  Herbert 
Spencer ;  Collins,  An  Epitome  of  the 
Synthetic  Philosophy ;  Courtney, 
The  Metaphysics  of  J.  S.  Mill; 
Douglas,  J.  5;-vMill;  Eliot,  Herbert 
Spencer;  Fiske,  Outlines  of  Cosmic 
Philosophy;  Green,  Works;  Grote, 
An  Examination  of  the  Utilitarian 


468 


Index 


Philosophy;  Guyau,  La  Morale 
anglaise  contemporaire ;  Hoffding, 
Einleitung  in  die  englische  Philoso- 
phie  unserer  Zeit;  Hudson,  Intro- 
duction to  the  Philosophy  of  Her- 
bert Spencer;  Macpherson,  Spencer 
and  Spencerism;  Masson,  Recent 
British  Philosophy ;  Radhackrish- 
nan,  Reign  of  Religion  in  Contem- 
porary Philosophy;  Ribot,  English 
Psychology;  Royce,  Herbert  Spen- 
cer; Schurman,  Ethical  Import  of 
Darwinism;  Seth,  The  Philosophical 
Radicals;  Sorley,  Ethics  of  Natural- 
ism; Stephen,  The  English  Utili- 
tarians ;  Thomson,  Herbert  Spencer ; 
Ward,  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism; 
Watson,  Outlines  of  Philosophy, 
Hedonistic  Theories. 
Objective  Idealism:  De  Laguna,  Dog- 
matism and  Evolution;  Frothing- 
ham,  Transcendentalism  in  New 
England;  Macintosh,  The  Problem 
of  Knowledge;  Nettleship,  Memoir 
of  T.  H.  Green;  Riley,  American 
Thought;  Schiller,  Studies  in  Hu- 
manism; Seth,  Man's  Place  in  the 
Cosmos;  Sinclair,  A  Defense  of 
Idealism;  Spaulding,  The  New  Ra- 
tionalism;    Sturt,     Idola    Theatri; 


Veitch,  Knowing  and  Being; 
Walker,  Theories  of  Knowledge. 
Contemporary  Tendencies:  Adams, 
Idealism  and  the  Modem  Age; 
Bawden,  Principles  of  Pragmatism; 
Bosanquet,  The  Meeting  of  Ex- 
tremes in  Contemporary  Philoso- 
phy; Boutroux,  William  James; 
Caldwell,  Pragmatism  and  Idealism; 
De  Laguna,  Dogmatism  and  Evolu- 
tion; Driscoll,  Pragmatism  and  the 
Problem  of  the  Idea ;  Essays  in  Crit- 
ical Realism;  Flournoy,  Philosophy 
of  William  James;  Joachim,  Nature 
of  Truth;  Kallen,  William  James 
and  Henri  Bergson;  Knox,  Philoso- 
phy of  William  James;  Lee,  Vital 
Lies;  Macintosh,  Problem  of 
Knowledge ;  Moore,  Pragmatism 
and  its  Critics;  Murray,  Pragma- 
tism; Pratt,  What  is  Pragmatism; 
Radhackrishnan,  Reign  of  Religion 
in  Contemporary  Philosophy ; 
Riley,  American  Thought;  Schinz, 
Anti-Pragmatism;  Sinclair,  A  De- 
fense of  Idealism;  Spaulding,  The 
New  Rationalism;  Wahl,  Les  Phi- 
losophies pluralistes  d'Angleterre  et 
d'Amerique;  Walker,  Theories  of 
Knowledge. 


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